Portions of Guelph-Eramosa will likely become a wellhead protection area for quantity, officials state.
On Dec. 19 risk management official Kyle Davis explained that since May 2015, peer reviewers have been looking at the Guelph/Guelph-Eramosa tier 3 study for water budget and local area risk assessment for the City of Guelph, Rockwood and Hamilton Drive.
The province, through the Grand River Conservation Authority (GRCA), funded the municipality’s peer reviewers.
The study is part of the source protection technical work being completed under the Clean Water Act.
“There (were) two meetings,” Davis said.
“Although I can report … some of our concerns were certainly taken into consideration and some were addressed.”
However, he said some are still outstanding.
“At the end of the provincial peer review meetings the province made it very clear that it was now the provincial peer review team’s ball to carry, that our piece was done,” Davis said.
The conclusions of the quantity risk assessment are not yet public, however it’s likely that the City of Guelph, the GRCA and the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change “will conclude that wellhead protection area for quantity is warranted around the City of Guelph and including the Guelph-Eramosa systems and that policies will be required.”
Guelph-Eramosa and Wellington County will create the policies for the township while Guelph will create the policies for the city.
Mayor Chris White asked who would have priority if Guelph and Guelph-Eramosa Township were each looking to put in a commercial building that used the same amount of water.
“If they were building a new Costco and they were putting a million gallons (of water) into it and it was coming out of the municipal system, that would take priority over, ‘we’re going to do a million gallons because we’re doing a Costco on 124 but it’s (taken from) a well’?” White asked. “Even though the municipal water system is funded from the same wells?”
Davis replied, “Municipal water taking would be protected in Guelph in that case whereas the private well could face additional restrictions in the protection of water process.”
White said he doesn’t want to end up in a situation where all of Guelph’s industry is approved and none of Guelph-Eramosa’s projects are considered.
“We’re pretty much done with residential development,” he said. “We’ve got some properties we need to develop in order to maintain a relatively stable tax scenario and its very important that we don’t get deep-sixed while [Guelph continues] to grow, grow, grow.”
Davis said the province plans to make the water quantity risk assessment public on Feb. 2.
Septic update
Davis also updated council on the progress of the Clean Water Act’s manual septic inspections. WSP Canada Inc. was hired to perform the septic inspections and to date 401 of 421 inspections were completed in Guelph-Eramosa.
“Good for you,” White said. “We thought that this was going to be hard.”
The 20 remaining inspections are scheduled for this year and must be completed by September.
“Some of these are properties that have gotten back to us and said for various reasons can we schedule it next year?” Davis said. “But there are some properties that have ignored our letters and/or set up inspections and ignore the inspection, so … we are anticipating some access issues.”
