When project accounting goes bad

This project, “$27M down the drain with Manotick pipeline plan” seems odd.
$27 million for 376 homes?
A real estate guy on my hockey team recently said upon hearing that I was a water engineer, “That’s smart business. We always say, ‘follow the sewers’ cause they lead to the money.”
In this case, it seems like the City is trying real hard to ensure the developers / “Minto-owned lands” will be the ones making the money. Course the City is a Janus beast and is opposing the development at the same time by going to the OMB which is easily explained by understanding that action is originating in a different department. Not like two departments would ever consider coordinating their actions.

It’s Time To Drink Toilet Water

Slate hits a note with this article by Eilene Zimmerman. The Netherlands started a practice almost 25 years ago of treating wastewater and pumping it into the ground. In their case though, it was to push back the saline water boundary with fresh water. If they pump out too much ground water they get salt water intrusions.

The waterfootprint.org is an interesting site worth checking out.