The municipal water sector has seen a number of changes over the last five years. This summary report presents highlights of a detailed water sector report completed for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ (FCM) Green Municipal Fund. This report provides a snapshot of current water management trends, issues and best practices.
To ensure that the City of Toronto’s goal to increase urban forest cover to 40% can move forward sustainably, minimizing conflicts between green and grey infrastructure and identifying solutions to existing conflicts has become a priority. The Toronto Green Standard means that more trees are being planted, and there is increasing potential for conflicts to [...]
This report provides a “snapshot” of the diversity of approaches taken to prioritize plans and actions related to stormwater management and urban flood prevention for six municipalities/utilities across Canada. For each of these municipalities, in order to obtain the kinds of insights desired by Toronto Water in understanding the nature of practices of different cities [...]
In 2017, Public Sector Digest (PSD), Canadian Water Network (CWN), and the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association (CWWA) partnered on a national study of municipal asset management practices to identify and assess what data is being collected by Canadian utilities on water, wastewater, and stormwater assets, and how this information is being used to inform [...]
Across the country, cities are experiencing challenges such as unprecedented population growth, limited space for development, the need for redevelopment and a changing climate. In addition, many water, wastewater and stormwater systems are near or past the capacity for which they were designed. Densification, growing populations and extreme weather events are impacting these systems. The [...]
Flooding, both fluvial (riverine) and pluvial (from intense rainfall events), has caused significant damage to communities in Canada over the past two decades. Over this period, property claims have slowly increased, and now represent 36.8% of all insurance claims for the Canadian insurance sector, with the largest percentage of property claims resulting from flooding. In [...]
Flooding, both fluvial (riverine) and pluvial (from intense rainfall events), has caused significant damage to communities in Canada over the past two decades. Over this period, property claims have slowly increased, and now represent 36.8% of all insurance claims for the Canadian insurance sector, with the largest percentage of property claims resulting from flooding. In [...]
Municipalities across Canada will be upgrading their wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) to meet Canada’s Wastewater Systems Effluent Regulations, which came into force in 2015, and the upgrades will remove relatively more contaminants. As such, some co-benefits of the upgrades are anticipated for endocrine-related impacts on downstream fish and other aquatic life (Canadian Water Network, 2018). [...]
To make effective decisions about adapting to climate change (including flood management), municipalities, provincial/federal levels of government and the private sector need relevant, timely and reliable climate data. Canada’s Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance recommended the establishment of a Canadian Centre for Climate Information and Analytics (C3IA) as an authoritative source of climate information and [...]
This report has four objectives. The first is to articulate insights on current and evolving trends in the municipal water sector, which includes water, wastewater and stormwater management. The second objective is to analyze the key drivers, challenges and needs of this sector. The third is to identify trends in leading practices and opportunities for [...]