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Rural Resilience

Rural communities, especially those with 1,000 residents or fewer, face a number of challenges when it comes to drinking water, including aging water infrastructure, limited…

The Rise of Water P3s

Public-private partnerships (P3s) are still a relatively new concept in Canada, and employing them to deliver water and wastewater projects can be confusing for the…

Balancing Act

Properly maintained water and wastewater systems underpin our quality of life. Most Canadians are unaware of the poor condition of these systems and the risks…

All Systems Go

How often do you find yourself engaging in deep dialogue about systems with acquaintances, colleagues, or clients? When engaging in systems talk, we often notice…

Smart Excavation

The debate over the best form of excavation—open-cut versus trenchless technology—rages on. This debate is perplexing because an electrician is never asked which screwdriver they…

Think Like a Watershed

The increasing pressures of population growth, pollution, and a changing climate, coupled with strong demands for more local control, are making it increasingly apparent that…

On the Level

Winter was at full throttle in 1993 when Colleen Cooney opened her daily newspaper and learned the City of Orillia closed one of its wells…

Water Under Pressure

Saskatchewan’s economy has been growing at a feverish pace the past few years on the pillars of agriculture, mining, and oil-and-gas development. Although growth has…

The Sustainable Water Industry

It has been a tough five years for the water industry. Prior to 2008’s financial crisis, the companies providing water technologies and services were flying…

Troubled Waters

The Capital Regional District’s (CRD) attempt to build a Vancouver Island wastewater treatment plant has become a bureaucratic debacle as messy as the sewage it…

Canada, In Brief

Canada’s water challenges and the ways provinces and territories address those challenges can be so similar yet entirely unique. Each jurisdiction’s positions on issues of…

Tapping In

Depending on where you are, it may be getting harder to buy a bottle of water. In response to concerns over the environmental, economic, and…

Escalating Tensions

The size of the Yukon’s Peel Watershed is often compared to New Brunswick or Scotland, but the enormity of more than 67,000 square kilometres of…

Change in Attitude

With the 2013 Calgary and Toronto floods still fresh in our minds, and the bone-chilling cold of the polar vortex lingering well into spring, Canadians…

Green Treatment

Community wastewater treatment plants and botanical gardens generally don’t have all that much in common. One is a noisy industrial facility while the other is…

A Watershed Moment

What happens when data streams from an intensely instrumented watershed are combined with next-generation analytics in a high-powered computing environment? The answer is an unprecedented…

Putting Water on Page 1

When it comes to water perception and management, the public is the chief driver of change. Unfortunately, a shocking number of Canadians appear to be…

Investing to Save

Like many jurisdictions, Ontario is working to ensure the financial and environmental sustainability of municipal water, wastewater, and stormwater systems. While “doing more with less”…

The Urban Food Cycle

A new agricultural alternative is sprouting up in some of North America’s largest cities. Forget images of cattle grazing on a hot summer’s day or…

For Us, By Us

In the Canadian water industry, professionals from different regions work with unique natural challenges and political systems. Organizers behind the Water Initiative for the Future…

Taking a Hike

If a pipe bursts underground, does it still show up on your bill? Thanks in part to inattention and years of relatively cheap water rates,…

Hot Potato

On the East Coast of Canada, a contentious debate rages on over the Prince Edward Island Potato Board’s request to have a moratorium lifted on…

Below and Beyond

On the surface, the grate is inconspicuous—
it doesn’t appear to be any different than all the other sewer grates in the city of Toronto. The…

Wasted Potential

It has been estimated by the U.S. Department of Energy that Americans flush 350 billion kilowatt-hours of energy into sewers each year. This wasted energy…