The Region of Waterloo has identified a water capacity issue, and said population growth and aging infrastructure has led to an issue that will need to be addressed quickly.
In an announcement made on Thursday, the region said that a water capacity issue has been identified within the Mannheim Service Area, an area which supplies water to Kitchener, Waterloo, parts of Cambridge, as well as Woolwich and Wilmot.
“I don’t know who could have predicted the growth bumps,” said Mathieu Goetzke, the acting chief administrative officer for the Region of Waterloo. “The population bump in 2023, I think we were over 4 per cent growth year over year, this year we’re at 0.4 per cent. These heavy fluctuations, these are really hard to predict long-term.”
In order to identify these issues, the region has begun a third-party review of their capacity issues, and have reportedly taken steps in the interim to expedite the repair of aging infrastructure as well as the installment of new infrastructure.
The region operates 100 wells, making up about three quarters of the water supply, and collects surface water from the Grand River, which makes up about one quarter of the water supply. That water gets run through 50 regional treatment plants, and then onto the municipalities.
“To track towards 2051 and a million people, we need to fix the infrastructure we already have, make sure that the Mannheim Treatment Plant and the other wells operate at full capacity, and as we track towards a million, we’ll need some new sources,” said Goetzke.
The region emphasized that this is strictly a quantity issue which does not have any impact on drinking water quality, and that there is no immediate impact on residents and no need to change current water consumption habits.
Visit regionofwaterloo.ca/watercapacity for the latest updates from the Region of Waterloo concerning the water supply.