GuelphToday received the following letter to the editor from reader Mike Marcolongo.
As a city resident you likely know that we are dependent on groundwater for our drinking water. The water we depend on is protected through a carefully thought-out plan that includes wellhead protection zones and other safeguards.
This well-thought-out plan was undermined on Tuesday, Dec. 5th, when Mayor Guthrie and six other members of city council took advantage of a back-door process offered by the Ford government to vote to change a significant land-use designation in the Guelph Innovation District. This decision will likely have generational impacts on the city’s water supply. (It will also raise property taxes, but that’s another story).
Guelph developer Fusion Homes was granted permission to convert 64 acres of employment lands to residential. The water demands of the changed designation could put the City of Guelph in a water crisis because the former employment lands could now house thousands of additional units.
Mayor Guthrie supported this decision without any evidence or public input in a decision that flies in the face of Guelph’s water supply master plan, designed to guarantee our water supply to 2051. (By the way it was only in June of 2022 that Guelph City Council unanimously approved spending $222 Million for this water supply master plan).
As our water resources are limited in supply – when Guelph council makes planning decisions, they are asked to 1) steward existing water resources by existing users, and 2) to approve new development applications that allocate our city’s water “rights” for new homes and employers to our community.
We need leaders that carefully and fairly distribute those water rights. Because our groundwater is after all our collective right, because we cannot survive without clean water and because those water “rights” are paid for through our taxes.
The chief administrative officer of the City of Guelph warned council of the potential consequences of approving this change: “The water issue is very troubling” stated Scott Stewart before alluding that the only option for more water may be a pipeline from Lake Erie and that it “…is not an easy inter-basin water transfer”.
Stewart tried to impress upon council the implications of moving forward with this change without data, studies or a full understanding of the consequences: “This one gives us heartburn”.
Mayor Cam Guthrie in moving the motion to grant Fusion Homes their request to convert the 64 acres from employment to residential using a highly unusual process or planning studies either didn’t understand or failed to listen to the implications of this decision for Guelph’s limited water supply.
Mayor Guthrie subsequently wrote a letter to Ford government Housing Minister Paul Calandra stating “…I want to highlight concerns with which we need your help. Our current water supply, which is reliant on groundwater, may put constraints across the entire city by the time we are built out to 2051”.
Given that Guthrie’s motion created the risks to Guelph’s water security what is his motivation for writing this letter? If this is the mayor’s opening move in a strategy to bring a water pipeline to Guelph, he must announce it so the community can declare its support or opposition.
Mayor Guthrie through a tie-breaking vote by Ward 6 councillor. Dominque O’Rourke and with support from councillors Dan Gibson (Ward 1), Ken Chew (Ward 6), Christine Billings (Ward 4), Michelle Richardson (Ward 3) and Rodrigo Goller (Ward 2) made a decision that puts at risk the future water security of Guelph residents. Making this decision without planning studies, evidence or public input demonstrates a serious lack of judgment on their part.
Last Tuesday’s council decision is, pardon the pun, a watershed moment for the City of Guelph – and will need to be reversed if Guelph is to meet residents’ needs for water security to 2051.
And you are right to ask: what about the dire need for more housing in the City of Guelph?
Although Guelph is in dire need of affordable housing immediately, shovels would not go into the ground for this phase of the residential conversion until 2036 at the earliest for a developer with a track record of only providing market-rate housing.
Just as with the recent Greenbelt scandal, we must be watchful of false solutions proposed to meet the housing crisis. Undermining the democratic process in order to benefit developers appears to be the name of the game with the Ford government and now, our Mayor Guthrie and a handful of councillors.
Residents must let Mayor Guthrie and vote tie-breaker O’Rourke know that they will pay a political price for putting a developer’s interests ahead of residents’ critical water needs.
Mike Marcolongo, Guelph
