REGION OF WATERLOO, WATER CONSERVATION AND PROPAGANDA

Today's Waterloo Region Record carrys this story "Dropping water demand pushes Lake Erie pipeline past 2051". So our population continues to grow dramatically as evidenced by continuing real estate sales, new residential construction, higher traffic volumes and of course the so called need for Light Rail transit. So far so good and I can certainly agree with John Jackson's position that reliance on Lake Erie's water is very problematic. There are both huge quality and cost issues involved with the long proposed pipeline.

The problem is the horse manure being sold to the public. Yes summer lawn watering has been greatly reduced via essentially voluntary restrictions. As far as fewer washing machines, dishwashers , showers and toilet flushings give me a break. They have but one direction only to go as our ever increasing population continues to rise. The elephant in the room which apparently politicians don't want to mention is Ontario's and the Region of Waterloo's industrial collapse. Heavy and light manufacturing uses vast quantities of water. Budd, Uniroyal, Kaufman, textiles, furniture manufacturing; they've all gone south and east thankyou very much to our federal politicians via one way "free trade" deals. The rich have gotten richer while the rest of us have lost high wage jobs and the next generation never will have them. This and this alone is why the Region of Waterloo as well as other jurisdictions are experiencing relief from evergrowing water demands. It would be nice if this silver lining would extend to air pollution improvements as well but with production merely shifting around the world and air being much more homogeneous this will be limited.