A third-party review is currently being carried out to assess water capacity in the Waterloo region due to concerns about aging infrastructure and a rising population’s effects on the community.
The Region of Waterloo gets its water from a mix of 100 wells and the Grand River.
Mathieu Goetzke is the acting CEO for the region. He mentions that residents won’t be impacted.
“Nobody’s going to stop having water at their tap.. we have enough capacity to supply all of the existing demands,” he said, emphasizing that the quality of the water will not be affected.
“The issue that we’re seeing is a bit of an imbalance between the historical growth of the region and where the water is in the region to be able to bring it to the residents.”
The water capacity concern has been highlighted in the Mannheim Service Area, which includes some of Kitchener and Waterloo’s most populated regions. It also covers a small section of Cambridge, Breslau, and Elmira.
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The Region of Waterloo has found a future water capacity issue in the Mannheim service area, which supplies water to large parts of Kitchener and Waterloo. Smaller parts of Cambridge, Wilmot, and Woolwich are also affected. Residents won’t notice any changes in their water supply. (Region of Waterloo)
The region states there’s currently a third party assessing this service area for more insight into how serious the issue is.
In parallel, they say they’ve sped up plans for new infrastructure while fixing older facilities.
Goetzke mentions that so far, they’ve managed to avoid any serious issues with water capacity by effectively conserving usage. He notes that today, Waterloo region uses less water per person than other municipalities in Southern Ontario.
“People have been doing a lot of efforts for water conservation, but these efforts are plateauing,” he explained.
“It’s harder to improve your water efficiency because now a lot of households and everything that’s new that’s being built has efficient flushes and efficient shower heads. So that effort is done. We can’t do better.”
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‘Water is our most valuable asset’
Cambridge Mayor Jan Liggett stated “it is of utmost importance that a third-party review is being undertaken” to determine water capacity since much of what they use comes from groundwater. “Water is our most valuable asset, and we need to ensure at both the upper tier and lower tier level that we are watchful and do our due diligence that the infrastructure our water flows through is working at 100 per cent,” Liggett said in a statement. “Having just completed our city budget and currently undergoing regional budget this is a good reminder how important it is that reserve funds are built up and are used only for that which they are in place for.”Source link
