Toronto’s sewage woes were in the news last week. The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Sun, and the Toronto Star all ran stories about legal charges arising from a sewage bypass at Toronto’s Ashbridges Bay treatment plant. But the real story here isn’t that charges have been laid. The real story is that charges should be laid far more often.
Category Archives: Water and Wastewater
Preston Manning calls for metering and pricing to conserve water
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In a speech last week to the Empire Club of Canada, Preston Manning addressed looming water shortages in southern Alberta. He called for "a provincial policy requiring Albertans to meter and measure the use of every drop of water consumed in the province and the attachment of a price to that water to conserve and allocate it efficiently."
Feds send mixed messages on sewage pollution
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Environment Minister Jim Prentice has recently expressed serious concerns about sewage pollution across Canada. But the government’s purported commitment to cleaning up sewage polluting seems to conflict with recent actions it has taken on the West Coast. In two cases in the last two years, the government has stayed charges laid under the Fisheries Act by citizens determined to clean up sewage pollution.
Update on water utility privatization in the US
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The Reason Foundation’s Annual Privatization Report 2009, released in August, provides a good snap shot of private-sector involvement in American water and wastewater utilities. Some highlights:
• Public Works Financing reports that 1,336 government agencies contracted out some part of their water or wastewater utility operations in 2008.
• Governments appear to be satisfied with their outsourcing arrangements. In 2008, 95 percent of the water industry contracts up for renewal were renewed with the incumbent contractor, and five percent went to a competitor. Just five percent reverted to municipal operations.
Environmental coalition calls for full-cost pricing of water
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A coalition of environmental organizations and water associations is calling on Ontario to encourage volume-based water pricing to promote conservation.
H2Ontario: A Blueprint for a Comprehensive Water Conservation Strategy, released in August, calls for a "market transformation" that will embed in the economy "the right signals" for citizens, businesses, and communities. It urges the province to do three things to bring about such a transformation: mandate meters; move towards full-cost and volume-based pricing; and increase water charges for water users.
Canadians, wary of drinking water, look to private sector
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A recent poll by Circle of Blue found that 65 percent of the Canadians surveyed were very concerned about the lack of safe drinking water. And 82 percent agreed that solving Canada’s drinking water problems will require significant help from companies.
Ontario’s drinking water: the problems persist
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Every year, Ontario’s Chief Drinking Water Inspector produces a report on the province’s water systems. The current report (for April 2007 – March 2008) came out in June. Despite the Inspector’s assurances to the contrary, the report includes much to be concerned about.
Water exports: debunking the myths
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Several contributors to Policy Options (July-August 2009) dismiss concerns about bulk water exports as largely unfounded. Harry Swain calls fears of US appropriation of Canadian water "largely illusory if only because both we and the Americans price water so cheaply that it cannot bear the cost of shipping or pumping." Frédéric Lasserre maintains that large-scale water export "proposals are not a real cause for concern because of the evolution of the demand and the poor return on investment they offer."
Full-cost water pricing
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The July-August 2009 issue of Policy Options calls attention to the importance of water prices that reflect the full costs of service.
Canadian water prices are among the lowest in the developed world. According to Steven Renzetti and Colin Busby, prices are approximately one-third of those charged in Germany, and just one-quarter of those charged in France. Worse, water costs are often unrelated to water use. About one-third of Canadian households do not have water meters.
Fresh water: Canada’s most important natural resource
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The current issue of Policy Options (July-August 2009) is devoted to Canada’s water challenges. I’ll feature highlights from it in upcoming blogs.
♦ Pollster Nik Nanos reports that Canadians, by an overwhelming margin, view fresh water as the most important natural resource for Canada’s future. A recent Nanos Research poll revealed that 61.6 percent of the 1001 Canadians polled chose fresh water as the most important natural resource.
A General Introduction to Property Rights and the Environment
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In this presentation to Property Rights and the Environment, a student colloquium held in Vancouver in July 2009, Elizabeth Brubaker explains that property rights provide incentives to conserve scarce resources, such as water and fish.
The commodification of ‘blue gold’
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Water’s value increases as it becomes scarcer. Elizabeth Brubaker, executive director of Environment Probe, says an accurate water pricing system is the best way to promote water conservation.
Protecting Canada’s water resources with full and fair pricing
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“Whiskey,” Mark Twain famously said, “is for drinking, and water is for fighting over.” And increasingly, fighting over it we are.
Water and Wastewater Treatment in Canada: Tapping into Private-Sector Capital, Expertise, and Efficiencies
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This chapter from A Breath of Fresh Air: Market Solutions for Improving Canada’s Environment reviews the challenges faced by Canada’s water and wastewater utilities and proposes private investment, private operations, and better accountability mechanisms, including enforceable contracts and more effective regulation of utility performance. It also recommends a federal role in facilitating private-sector involvement.
Who killed water markets?
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To really grasp the enormity of Alberta’s coming water challenges, you have to make a trip to the Columbia Icefields viewpoint in Jasper National Park. (You have to make the trip there anyway, but that’s another story.) A series of signs mark how far the glacier extended in past years. Back in the 1890s, it buried what is now the Icefields Parkway. In the 1920s, it was where the parking lot is now located. To reach the ice today, you have to leave your car and trudge over a kilometre of moraine, and on the way a shocking realization hits you. At the 1983 sign, you’re still only halfway there. The pace of the retreat has been picking up alarmingly.
Environmentalist makes case for privatization of water treatment
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A leading water environmentalist is urging Alberta to privatize publicly run water utilities, ending a "cozy relationship" between the government and municipal utility operators. Elizabeth Brubaker, executive-director of Toronto’s Environment Probe policy group, says privatization will improve accountability and is the best way to boost water quality while reducing costs.
Water is too precious for politics
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Alberta’s water utilities need work. A few years ago, the province conducted an assessment of its 534 water-treatment plants. It found widespread problems – especially in southern Alberta, where 70% of the systems got poor ratings.
The Economic Water Cycle
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The 2007 EPCOR Distinguished Lecture, presented by the Centre for Applied Business Research in Energy and the Environment, in Edmonton, Alberta, on October 18, 2007.
Treating Victoria’s sewage: Key roles for the public and private sectors
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Victoria is, at long last, preparing a plan to treat its sewage. After decades of denying that it is causing harm and resisting pressures to clean up, BC’s capital regional district (the CRD, as the greater Victoria region is known) is being forced to assume its environmental responsibilities.
The Future of Water and Wastewater in British Columbia: The Case for Public-Private Partnerships
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A presentation to the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce, in Victoria, British Columbia, on May 2, 2007.
Environment Probe 