Well, well, well the mud is starting to fly. Today's K-W Record has a story by Terry Pender titled "Regional councillor wants probe into water crisis". Reporter Luisa D'Amato apparently also attended last Wednesday's Waterloo Region council meeting and spoke about it in her Opinion piece titled "For some of us, the water crisis has already arrived". The good news is that both reporters picked up on the same strange occurrences at that council meeting.
The biggest and baddest is the announcement that both the public and regional councillors have been misled factually regarding water taking from Wilmot Township. I was aware of the 1980 agreement between the Region and Wilmot Township that the township's water would not be unilaterally diverted by the Region towards other parts of the Region in particular to the tri cities. That appeared to be changed when the mayor of Wilmot, Ms. Salonen recently gave agreement in principle for the Region to take 30 litres per second from her township for use in the water short areas of K-W and Woolwich. That agreement appears to need to be ratified by her council (Wilmot) as well. Last Wednesday's regional council meeting had a major revelation. In fact the Region indeed did divert Wilmot water to the cities six or seven years ago and it's been ongoing! Nicely done Region of Waterloo. You've now admitted to lying to the public, Wilmot Township and presumably to most of your own regional councillors. WOW !!!
That betrayal and worse will take decades to live down if ever. Meanwhile councillor Doug Craig wants an independent probe into the causes of the water supply crisis. He's not the only one but skeptic that I am I have to ask is this for real or simple politics? Mr. Craig has also appropriately condemned the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs). What I am left wondering and unclear from both these articles is whether regional staff actually were going to divert and pump an additional 30 litres per second to K-W and Woolwich or were they simply gilding the lily about the diversion they did back in 2019 ?
One other major point. To date I have only seen reporter Luisa D'Amato twice reference wells being taken offline due to contamination. That is a huge element to the alleged Quantity only (i.e. Supply) problems in our water systems. Do not most reasonable people understand that shut down wells due to industrial contamination in Elmira and Kitchener affect the Supply of water available? Then there is the reality that there are also operating wells in both Waterloo and Cambridge with toxic trichloroethylene (TCE) in them that are still operating thanks to dilution and mixing with the rest of the water supply. Can that go on forever?
Whether self-serving or not Doug Craig's asking the right questions as did councillor Joe Gowing recently. Councillor Huinink just got added to my regular e-mail list due to her published skepticism about agreeing to allocating water for growth at this time. Meanwhile Melissa Durell, Mr. Puopolo and other self-serving developers and builders can go suck on a raw egg at least until both the public and the Region really know where we stand on water supply.
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