How did the Region of Waterloo end up in a water crisis?

Lee Griffi, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

“There is definitely a water shortage. It’s a crisis when your city announces it’s closed for business.”

Those are the words of Kevin Thomason, the vice chair of the Grand River Environmental Network. Much has been made of the water situation in Waterloo Region recently and concerns are being raised by politicians, developers and members of the public. Thomason said a report from a third-party consultant paints a grim picture.

“The report made it clear it is much worse than the region is letting on. The region consistently overpumped in 2023, 2024 and 2025, exceeding sustainable levels. They are taking out more water than is being replenished and now they are at a point where it's too low.”

He added pumping needs to be reduced to allow the water supply to restore acceptable levels and find water from another source.

“But there is record demand and there is no other source and they are continuing to pump it at unsustainable levels, hence the dire action of stopping all future development approvals.”

The region has identified a water capacity constraint in the Mannheim service area, which supplies water to parts of Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, Wilmot and Woolwich. This means the existing water system may not have enough sustainable capacity to support future growth and development as currently planned. Because the system is operating near its limits, the region has paused approval of some new development applications until solutions are in place.

“We can’t underestimate the seriousness of this. We’re not in the middle of an August drought where it hasn’t rained for two weeks. We are complaining about record snowfalls and we’re still in this trouble. We can’t underestimate this crisis,” Thomason said.

Thomason criticized the region’s handling of the water supply but said responsibility largely rests with the province, dating back roughly three decades.

“They wanted to build a pipeline to Lake Erie that was going to cost $1 billion, which was just an unfathomable amount of money at that time. We realized we should be living within the capacity of our watershed, and if we properly managed our water, there would be lots of it here.”

He added the Ford government has approved a large number of gravel pits with no regard for the effects on water tables, including one in Shingletown. Another issue is the amount of growth being forced on municipalities.

“We continue to see stupid things like this forced boundary expansion where Doug Ford didn’t like a regional official plan because it was too sustainable and didn’t have enough urban sprawl. Instead, he ordered over 6,000 acres of expansion which is destroying farms in ground recharge areas.”

Thomason also said the province can’t produce a single page of justification, study or research as to where the water would come from.

“Ford has approved the region for 1.3 million people when you look at the amount of land he’s okayed for development, but there has never been a study for water over 900,000. This is what we have been warning about for years.”

Thomason said one of the most concerning areas is the Mannheim service area, which hit a dangerously low level on Monday.

“We had less than four per cent of a water reserve left in the Mannheim area. All the water for Kitchener, Waterloo, most of Cambridge, part of Wilmot and most of Woolwich comes from there. If any single well had gone offline, we probably would have had people with no water coming out of their taps.”

He added developers and others in the business lined up for eight hours of delegations at last week’s regional council meeting to express their dismay at the economic effects of the situation, and he said as of now, there is no plan B, meaning conservation is key.

“To me, the number one solution is to be more efficient with the water we’ve got. Maybe we need to be like Cape Town, South Africa, or Phoenix, Ariz., and tell people, ‘Sorry, you have to start having shorter showers and wash your car less.’ ”

He also suggested aggregate pit permits could be revoked to prevent millions of litres of water a day from being pumped from below the water table. Thomason said the water shortage is another nail in the coffin of the region’s 770-acre land grab in Wilmot Township.

“Who in their right mind is going to come and invest billions of dollars in a new plant that will likely need at least hundreds of thousands of litres of water a day when the region can’t even provision its own citizens? There’s no way anyone is coming anytime soon, and it's absolutely asinine to see the region still spending millions of dollars on trying to purchase those lands.”