Comments on: Losing the water we have is unacceptable in a time of water scarcity

By: Norvin Eitzen

Norvin Eitzen — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:15:22 +0000

Tyler, you are correct that the Pressure Pipe Inspection Company (PPIC) does supply services for detecting leaks in large diameter water transmission infrastructure.

I just thought I would chime in here to say that PPIC also offers forward looking condition assessment technologies that can pinpoint exactly where leaks WILL happen BEFORE they do. The end result is the development of a proactive pipeline management program where we won’t need to waste a drop of water from leaky pipes.

By: daneil

daneil — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:40:24 +0000

A typical car wash lasting 10 minutes uses approximately 100 gallons of water. What if we could conserve hundreds of gallons of water in one week. Go to a local car wash that uses recycled water or use an eco-friendly waterless car wash.

It takes only 15 minutes, is effective and uses no water

By: gopher65

gopher65 — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:09:37 +0000

Wow, those are some staggering numbers.

The problem is that in older cities, many of the water pipes are more than a century old, and some of the sewers are as old as the cities themselves (300-350 years old in the downtown cores, and usually more than 150 years in the younger, but still old, parts of these cities). These infrastructure systems have needed repair and replacement for a long time, but the political, corporate, and public will simply wasn’t there.

I live in Saskatoon, a city that just celebrated the 100 year anniversary of the it’s incorporation (and not much more than 100 years since the first building was built). Even in a very young city like this there are leaky lead (lead!) pipes all over the place.

Remember: the longer we wait to fix these infrastructure problems, the more it will cost.

By: Ted

Ted — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:37:45 +0000

Great catch Tyler – you’re exactly right on this issue. It’s another sleeper issue, like separate capital vs operating budgets at municipalities or federal properties unneccessarily holding back energy efficiency.

By: Ken Clive

Ken Clive — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:48:10 +0000

If Ontario’s got leakage rates this bad, I wonder what Ohio’s (where I’m from) are, considering that our state budget isn’t in great shape atm. At least you guys up in Canada don’t have the two-party separation as badly as we do here in the US, and you don’t have a bunch of conservatives that think consuming more of everything is going to fix the economy.

By: fed-up

fed-up — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:13:55 +0000

wow was there money set aside in the new Green Energy Act for this. It provides another example of bad policy. Obviously what should be going on is when policy is being made you should be looking at every study being done that connects with energy. past or in process. Even with an incomplete study one would have been able to gather that we are wasting massive amounts of water in some municipal water treatment plants. The GEA is bad policy through and through. we need to reconsider the amount of power we have placed in the hands of the provincial government through this legislation. go and sign the petition here.