Windsor is a North American Leader in Water Conservation – We Won An Award!

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The Detroit River is pictured

Windsor has been awarded the Most Progress on Water Conservation Award at the 9th annual bi-national Conference of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, held in Quebec City.

The award recognizes Windsor as a North American leader in water conservation, pollution prevention and sustainability. It also makes the Windsor Utilities Commission (WUC) known as one of North America’s most outstanding utilities in promoting and achieving water conservation.

“We need clean water to live. It’s not an option,” commented WUC General Manager John Wladarski. “We were asked to reduce our consumption from the Detroit River by 15% by 2015, and we have already exceeded that goal.”

Under its Water Conservation Strategy, the utility undertook extensive conservation initiatives involving both public education and improvements to the WUC’s distribution process. These have included water-saving improvements to the backwash process at the treatment plant, significant investment in the replacement of water mains, replacement of old, inaccurate water meters, specific monitoring of large water users, replacement of the SCADA system, public information sessions and participation in the Essex Region Children’s Water Festival.

These initiatives yielded 8.2 million cubic meters (2.1 billion gallons) of conserved water over 7 years. An increase in capital spent on water main infrastructure reduced the overall number of water main breaks from 329 in 2005 to 175 in 2011. That is equivalent to a 46.8% reduction in water main breaks over six years.