What’s more important than…

What’s more important than water? Nothing! We must protect it now because we can’t wait for our clean freshwater to dry up or to be contaminated.

Waterloo “Regional Councillors to vote for a Regional Official Plan (ROP) that protected farmland.” But now that could be undone because of a push for housing. But damaging our water supply won’t help us build more homes.

“An excellent report by Region of Waterloo Engineering and Environmental staff presented to Region Council last Wednesday March 20 explained why the Regional Recharge Area must be protected from urban development. The Regional Recharge Area is shown in blue on the attached map. You can see that several of the proposed new Urban Areas overlap with the recharge area.

I will beg that these areas be removed from the Urban Area.

The Engineering and Environmental staff report (pp 27-36 of the attached Regional Council package) give good reasons why:
« Because of its sand and gravel composition, the Regional Recharge Area allows huge amounts of snowmelt and rainfall to infiltrate deep into the ground and replenish the aquifers that supply our drinking water.

« Development reduces the amount of water reaching the aquifers by 50-80% (depending whether it's residential or commercial/industrial development).

« Thus developing (paving over) the Regional Recharge Area threatens the quantity of our water supply.

« Development in this area will put more road salt into our water supply. This threatens the quality of our water supply.

« Reduced water supply will limit the number of new homes that can be built throughout the Region.

« So ironically, building more new homes in the Regional Recharge Area could mean less new homes that can be built elsewhere in the Region!

« Or, it could mean we will need to build $2 billion pipeline to Lake Erie!

In addition

« The Regional Recharge Area sustains a wide range of aquatic habitats and ecosystems.

« The Regional Recharge Area contributes a high percentage of baseflow to the Grand River, its tributary rivers and cold water streams: this maintains the health of the Grand River.

« This baseflow dilutes wastes and pollution flowing into the Region's wastewater treatment plants and ensures our public health safety. If development on the Regional Recharge Area decreases the amount of baseflow, we may need expensive new wastewater treatment plants that can function with smaller baseflow.

We don't need to build on the Regional Recharge Area. Our visionary Regional Official Plan approved in August 2022 had only minimal farmland loss and showed there were lots of opportunities within our current urban boundaries to meet all our housing needs.
We don't need and we must not develop land in the Regional Recharge Area.“