WATER UPGRADES FOR WATERLOO REGION PLANNED

Today's Kitchener-Waterloo Record has a good news story from Terry Pender titled
"Province kicks in nearly $3M for water upgrades". Mr. Pender ostensibly backs his story with interviews and quotes from the following persons: MPP John Milloy, Mayor Carl Zehr, Kitchener's Director of Engineering Grant Murphy, Regional Chair Ken Seiling, and Regional Councillor Jane Mitchell. Wow that's impressive. One high level Municipal employee and four long time career politicians covering Municipal, Regional and Provincial levels.

"The City of Kitchener received $1 million to find ways of keeping sediments removed from stormwater ponds out of landfill sites. The research will help cities save millions of dollars by reducing disposal costs to $5 a tonne, down from $70 a tonne." That is an interesting quote. My bullshit metre is ringing very loudly. Perhaps new and different disposal methods are possible which would reduce the number of tonnes but how does that remotely reduce the per tonne cost? Zero explanation given.

"Kitchener and Waterloo received almost $1 million for a public education program to help property owners take practical steps to reduce stormwater runoff". Are they completely nuts? The vast majority of property owners own nothing more than their own homes, if they're lucky. Fifty to a hundred years ago residential subdivisions and homes were always built on high ground with hopefully a low watertable. Not anymore. Floodplains are discouraged and everything else is just fine. Storm sewers, pumping stations and mandatory sump pumps in new homes are now the norm. At my home I do everything possible to get rainwater to run off my small property rather than soaking into the ground around my foundation.

"And the Grand River Conservation Authority gets $903,000 for a new Grand River management plan." The claim is made that we are approaching a water crisis both in supply and quality and hence need to spend more money to study and research technologies to address it. Bullshit ! Sure there is a crisis and it starts at the top namely immigration and population plans. There is only one Grand River in Waterloo Region. All our Sewage Treatment plants dump into it. All our industries directly or indirectly dump into it. Our environment including water will only sustain a certain level of human beings in this Region. The growth economy including population is unsustainable. We have had technologies to improve sewage treatment at our plants for decades but politicians would rather build edifices than improving infrastructure. Drayton Theatre in Cambridge is just the most recent example.

Jane Mitchell states that the total cost for the new Grand River management plan will be in excess of $ 1.8 million. This costly local taxpayer funded plan will tell the politicains what they already know and yet refuse to do. It will join the thousands of reports before it, sitting on shelves. As my colleague Rich Clausi likes to say "When all was said and done, more was said than done."