Groundwater and Guelph

Groundwater and Guelph

“Think Global. Act Local”
-The Whole Earth Catalogue

I met him at a New Year’s party. Standing in our hosts’ kitchen he looked down upon my six-foot frame with clear and penetrating eyes framed by graying hair.

“I’ve worked for twenty-five years as a ground water technologist in the Earth Sciences Department at The University of Waterloo. I help teams of students and professors to do their field research, mostly taking samples from the limestone base in this region to test for pollutants?”

“And how do the results look?” I asked.

“Grim,” he replied. “There’s been a long history of heavy industry around here. It’s not looking good,” he said, now squinting his eyes against the painful truth that produced his words.

Grim? Yes. Impossible? No.

Dr. David Schlinder, Canada’s most respected water purity and maintenance scientist, who teaches at The University of Alberta, tells us there is still hope. But he adds that the window of opportunity is closing rapidly. “If we do not make the necessary changes in the way we manage our groundwater,” Dr. Schlinder said in a lecture at The Museum of Natural History [2005] broadcast on CPAC, “then all of our fresh water sources in Canada will be fouled beyond human consumption in seven to twelve years”. And he added that pollution is only part of the problem. We also face the possibility of serious drought in the next few years.

He spoke as a man who had shared this warning many times, convinced that no one was listening to his alarming statistics.

“But the good news is that there’s still time to act and we have the inexpensive nature-based technologies to turn back the tide of groundwater pollution. But we must act quickly and implement our science and technologies.”

It was two years ago that I heard him say this. Since then I have published some environmental ideas in my essay “The Future: Peace Pays [Exploring The Canadian Identity.]” Dr. Schindler has endorsed these ideas. One of my main recommendation is that we rapidly implement the Canadian technologies that he and his colleagues have devised.

But my philosophy concerning the environment is simply stated. “Don’t make the mess.” We must stop the poisoning and garbaging and destruction and careless overuse of the Earth. And the best place to begin is here in Guelph, a hotbed of environmentalists with a “get it done!” attitude.


Our new Mayor Karen Farbridge has Guelph’s long-term fresh water supply high on the priorities list for the next four years. She proposes planning a hundred years ahead.

I support her plans and raise her another hundred years. :)

John/Jake