NEW WEST MONTROSE WATER SUPPLY SYSTEM

The Elmira Independent carried a Public Notice on January 24/13 "West Montrose Water Supply Class Environmental Assessment Notice of Completion". The preferred alternative appears to be connection of West Montrose by a pipeline to the Conestogo Plains Water Supply System. This is counterintuitive on a number of levels. Firstly there is a massive amount of water available in West Montrose whether from the Grand River, four current infiltration wells along the river or by drilling into deeper protected aquifers in the area.

The Public Notice advises that the Final report is on line at www.region.waterloo.on.ca/water . Once you get there you have to look for water supply projects underway of which there are many in the Region. Keep looking and you will find West Montrose. So I figured I'd spend a few minutes looking things over and figure out how they concluded that water in Conestogo was the way to go. Well! 227 pages worth of report in total. I've just spent an hour and a half browsing through and believe me I could easily spend eight to twenty hours on this report figuring the ins and outs of the ranking system and how they end up in Conestogo for water for West Montrose. A couple of interesting things however. Allegedly West Montrose water suffers from both quantity and quality issues. Really! So what's new and different here? Yes it's river water somewhat naturally filtered by sand and gravel in the floodplain. This makes it GUDI or groundwater under direct influence of surface water. There will always be problems associated with that kind of source just as there is in the other Conestogo well system located by the Conestogo Golf Course and also GUDI.

My experience with "preferred alternatives" and reports allegedly weighing options is that they are all very subjective and usually the outcome is preordained. Somehow the authorities involved have already come to a decision and now they want to "prove" that it's the right one. Therefore they go through a convoluted list of scenarios and options supposedly objectively weighing all the factors. Most of the time the public are only given half of the facts because the authorities don't wish to alarm or panic the public. As a hypothetical example if there is increasing partially treated sewage coming down the Grand from upstream, the Region would prefer not to advise local citizens of that failure but instead would honestly state there are problems and then go through an elaborate process to fix the problem (ie. a new source) without being 100% forthcoming with the unwashed masses.

Will the hooking up of West Montrose to the Conestogo Plains System provide West Montrose citizens with better, more reliable water? Most likely. Are all the citizens of both communitys and nearby being given the whole unvarnished 100% accurate truth? Most unlikely.