Who We Are

The Organization

Wellington Water Watchers is an organization of citizens of Guelph/Wellington, committed to the protection of local water resources and to educating the public about threats to the watershed.

We promote tap water as a healthy and environmentally preferable alternative to bottled water. We seek constructive engagement with those who affect local water policy, and accountability from corporations. We ask that companies and policy makers apply the Precautionary Principle — proving no harm, beyond doubt, when engaged in projects that that could be harmful to our water resources.

We believe in preservation not just conservation. Our watershed supports many diverse forms of life. Our local ecosystem must be protected for the well being of all future generations.

Our membership includes many local citizens with backgrounds in politics, law, toxicology, and the food industry as well as local activists, students and professionals. The organization is run by a core of professional staff and an executive board and functions largely through the efforts of local volunteers.

A Community Partner

Since our founding in 2007, Wellington Water Watchers has become a community educator, sponsoring guest speakers including Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May and Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the United Nations General Assembly. We have also lead public speaking events around the city and at the University of Guelph, held panel debates on Rogers’s cable and CTV, and have maintained an annual presence serving free municipal tap water from a tanker truck to attendees at the Hillside Festival.

There is a great need for consolidated action on behalf of our water resources and Wellington Water Watchers is proud to work with other groups involved with local water issues. We work closely with the City of Guelph, “tap in,” a public water advocacy group at the University of Guelph, the Eden Mills Mill Pond Association, the Guelph Civic League, 10 Carden Street, and the Hillside Festival as well as the Polaris Institute, and the Council of Canadians.

The Issues

A healthy community must balance the interests of industry and development with sustainability and environmental stewardship. When there is conflict between these interests, it is the duty of citizens to stand on the side of sustainability and conservation, to look out for the interests of future generations. In Guelph/Wellington, our abundant water resources are at the center of just such a conflict and Wellington Water Watchers is leading the movement to defend them.

Here are some of the biggest hurdles:

• The Dolime Quarry: Our Gravest Groundwater Threat
  • The Dolime quarrying operation is the most obvious threat to our local water resources. Dolime is a limestone quarrying operation bordered by College Ave., the Hanlon Expressway, and Wellington Street, in Guelph. The site is owned by River Valley Developments Inc., a subsidiary of Carson Reid Homes, and is operated by James Dick Construction.
  • A 2008 study conducted by the Ontario Geological Society (OGS) found that recent blasting at the Dolime site has penetrated the aquitard, a protective layer that separates surface and ground water, preventing potentially harmful surface water contaminants from entering our groundwater reserves.
  • The damage has been extensive. The study has shown that the aquitard has been penetrated as deeply a five meters and may already be leeching harmful contaminants into our groundwater. This is of particular concern because of Guelph’s total reliance on groundwater sources for human consumption.
  • The company has called the blasting an “accident” and has blamed the site’s irregular topography for the damage. In January 2009, the Ministry of Natural Resources urged the company to cease operations until the results of the OGS study could be properly assessed.
  • There has been little compliance. The company has an extraction allowance of 500,000 tons per year. They are seeking to double the allowance despite objections from Wellington Water Watchers and the City of Guelph.
  • This crisis is simply too great to ignore. Wellington Water Watchers urges all citizens of Guelph Wellington to write their local and provincial government to demand that development at Dolime be terminated until further studies reveal the full extent of the damage.
  • to find out what you can do to stop the Dolime development. Take a stand for our groundwater.
• Nestlé: Selling Groundwater in Plastic Bottles
  • Wellington Water Watchers is best known for our opposition of Nestlé Canada Inc. . In 2007, Wellington Water Watchers lead the movement to curtail Nestlé’s local water bottling operations, achieving a two-year limit to their water-taking permit. That permit is up next year and we plan to oppose their application for renewal.
  • Nestlé’s local water pumping operations, located in Aberfoyle, just south of Guelph and Hillsburgh, near Erin to the east of Guelph, are among the Ontario’s largest, extracting a maximum of 4.7  million liters of water from our aquifer per day to bottle and sell as their Pure Life brand and other brands of water.
  • Despite this massive volume of water taken from our public aquifer, Nestlé has created very few jobs for local citizens and pays only $3,000 in licensing fees to the Province for their permit and less than $20 per day in water taking fees.
  • Our rivers are paying the real price. A study conducted by Nestlé’s own hydrologist found that the Aberfoyle bottling plant’s operations are causing a phenomenon called “flow reversal” in a nearby creek. When flow reversal occurs, water is being removed from the ground in such high volume that the stream is no longer a “spring” since the surface water is sucked into the ground by Nestle’s pumping. We are losing our water faster than most people know.
  • We believe that Nestlé’s presence in our community is simply not worth the cost. Guelph residents are paying through their own tax dollars to dispose of Aberfoyle Springs plastic bottles, which are rarely recycled. Plastic bottles account for approximately 70% of all non-refillable bottles in Ontario cities. These bottles sit in our landfills and leech chemicals into our ground water as they break down over an undetermined period, estimated at hundreds of years by even the most conservative studies.
  • We strongly oppose losing our groundwater and footing the bill for disposing of the trash that results from Nestlé bottled water.
  • Please consider adding your voice and financial support to our opposition. Our goal is to oppose the renewal of Nestlé’s permit to take water in 2010.
  • Three things you can do right now:
    1. Fill out the membership form on our home page. You will contacted.
    2. Donate to this important cause. Help protect the future.
    3. Boycott all Nestlé products and convince your family and friends to do the same.
• Places To Grow: Pressuring Guelph To Grow
  • Places to Grow is an act of the provincial legislature that designates areas of growth in the “Golden Horseshoe, ”a vast region surrounding the city of Toronto from Oshawa to the Niagara River, including Guelph/Wellington.
  • The legislation attempts to compensate for development lands lost through protective “green belt” legislation by designating municipal areas where planned growth is preferred. Under the act, these municipalities are targeted for “intensification” of housing, commercial property, and transportation.
  • Guelph is identified as a growth centre, with an estimated 50,000-70,000 additional residents by 2027 as well as major increases in transportation and commercial infrastructure. In other words, more roads, more buildings, and, unfortunately, more sprawl.
  • Already the legislation is proving unsustainable. Current development planning under “Places to Grow” is being written without assessment of the area’s resources and ability to sustain the prescribed intensification.  This concern was raised in the Ontario Environmental Commissioners report in 2008.
  • Of major concern is the planned building of pipeline connecting Kitchener/Waterloo, Cambridge, and Guelph to Lake Erie. This proposition, which will increased our local water supply to facilitate further development, does not address the safety and security of our existing groundwater. They will certainly be under much greater strain.
  • In fact, a pipeline, while bringing water to the community may deplete our groundwater even further. A pipeline would displace large quantities of water from Lake Erie. The government has promised that this lost water will be reintroduced from another source. “Feeding the pipe” to compensate could force our city to increase the amount of water we take from the aquifer so we can send it to the lake in the form of processed waste water — a bizarrely unsustainable practice.
  • The province’s plan to simply offload development onto communities like Guelph poses a great threat to our water and other natural resources and threatens our community’s health and future prosperity. Allowing this level of development to occur without proper assessment of its ecological impact is a serious error. Wellington Water Watchers sees conservation and limited use of our finite resources as the only way to achieve sustainability over the long term.
  • Please consider taking action by and demanding that a better assessment be made of intensification under “Places to Grow.”
  • Fight the pipe by informing your friends about the threat it poses to our water security. We are not a community that will be pushed around by developers and large water-taking businesses. But pushing back has to start with all of us.
  • See how you can help immediately.
• Message In A Bottle: Education and Conservation in Our Schools
  • We will distribute a stainless steel water bottle to 50,000 school children in Guelph and Wellington County through this program.
  • The Message In a Bottle campaign is a Wellington Water Watchers initiative to remove all bottled water from Guelph schools by the end of the next school year.
  • Our goal is to teach the next generation the importance of conservation, sustainability, and water responsibility, while setting a precedent in pollution control.
  • The project, the first of its kind worldwide, will deliver a 500-ml stainless steel water bottle to every grade school student in Guelph. The project was initiated with funding from the Ministry of the Environment Community Go Green Fund and facilitated by the Wellington County District School Board, the City of Guelph and other partners.
  • Our pilot program at Gateway School was a great success. We plan to have the program implemented in all Guelph public schools by March 2010.
  • The project empowers children to reduce their own greenhouse gas emission.  Each single use plastic bottle thrown away is the equivalent of 40 grams of CO₂ emitted.
  • The next step: a bottled water ban within Guelph schools and perhaps, one day, the city itself.
• What You Can Do: Get Involved!
  • Wellington Water Watchers is only as strong as its membership. Preserving and protecting our water is a big job that will never end. We need your help. By joining Wellington Water Watchers you will receive one free 500ml stainless steel water canteen or travel coffee mug.
  • We also need volunteers. Volunteering is great way for high school students to get their required volunteer hours or for local citizens to become more involved in their community. There are plenty of .
• Donate!
  • As our role in the community grows so does the necessity for full time staff, volunteers, and increased community presence. Every donation helps as we promote responsible water usage, inform the public about the harm of bottled water, hold corporations such as Nestlé accountable, and lobby with government offices.