THREATS TO LOCAL WATER SUPPLY

This is twice within a week that the K-W Record have mentioned this ongoing study. It truly must be an election year! A week ago I quoted an announcement in the Record detailing dates of some of these public meetings. Unfortunately although the Record put their news stories on line I'm assuming that public announcements don't get the same treatment as I wasn't able to provide a link to it at the K-W Record's website. Well that is fixed and here is the link to today's story. "Significant threats have been identified at 6,000 properties across the Grand River watershed, including about 2,700 in Waterloo Region". Those numbers blow my mind. The next sentence in the article starts: "Letters will be going out to those property owners cautioning them about the risk of contamination from sources such as...".

Gee, letters sound awfully strong to me. I wonder if the letters will also state "Do not worry; even if you shut down municipal wells due to greed and negligence, we the municipalities and the Region of Waterloo will move heaven and earth to assist our industrial friends from having to bear the full wrath of the public ". The final problem with this entire exercise is that the foxes are guarding the chicken coop. In other words our elected bodies and politicians have long ago been "captured" by those they are supposed to be supervising. It is the municipalities which will develop and propose policies to the Lake Erie Region Source Protection Committee, formed by provincial legislation after the Walkerton disaster. Remember what my colleague Rich Clausi says about committees: "If you don't want to do anything about a problem, then form a committee."