The Canadian Municipal Water Consortium continues to foster collaboration and innovation within the water servicing sector. Recently, 28 municipal and utility water leaders from across the country gathered for an in-person meeting in Hamilton, Ontario. The meeting provided a platform for valuable discussions, guest presentations, and peer learning around current successes and challenges in servicing urban densification. The conversations focused on:
- Short-term servicing solutions to support growth and development, and opportunities for increased collaboration and innovation.
- Changing the narrative of water as a service to water as an opportunity.
- Adapting to change, including reorganization, staff departures and succession planning, growth and inflation.
Peer learning and networking are central to CWN’s approach to supporting the municipal water sector. Consortium Leaders continue to share that CWN is one of their favourite industry organizations, as it creates a unique space that intentionally allows members to connect with and learn from their peers from across the country.
Updates on our Strategic Sharing Groups
The Consortium team will host several meetings in the next quarter for Strategic Sharing Group (SSG) members. SSGs are communities of practice that provide a space for municipalities and utilities to share and learn from one another and from industry experts on current topics of interest. The Net-Zero Actions SSG will host its bi-annual meeting in late summer to continue conversations about approaches and lessons learned to advance net-zero initiatives in water, wastewater and stormwater utilities. The Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CEC) SSG will convene in early fall for its annual check-in meeting, where members of the group will continue to share strategies for managing risks from CECs.
Two new SSGs are launching this fall, a Stormwater SSG and a Data SSG. The Stormwater SSG will host regular meetings in the next year on the topic of climate change adaptation, with a focus on stormwater management strategies, tools, technologies and practices. The SSG will also discuss funding options, low impact development systems and case studies of stormwater management. The Data SSG will build from previous discussions on solutions to challenges that municipalities are facing when it comes to advancing data governance frameworks, including staff training and expertise and access to data. The SSG will also explore data analytics strategies that embrace new and emerging tools, such as AI.