Success! 2012 Waste & Water Budgets | Toronto Environmental Alliance

Success! 2012 Waste & Water Budgets | Toronto Environmental Alliance
Toronto Water budget

After many hours of debate about industrial water users and pollution in Toronto, Council voted against the Mayor's Executive Committee recommendation to subsidize water rates for industrial polluters.

Industrial water users have the option to get discounted water rates (called the Block 2 rate) if they create water efficiency plans and don’t break the City’s important water pollution by-laws. The budget proposed to remove this eligibility criteria and give the discount to all industries, whether they've been found to violate the pollution by-laws or not. Councillors voted to solve the administrative problems of the program, rather than scrap it altogether.

This would have cut City revenue by over $3 million, and would mean higher costs to the city to monitor and treat pollution. (sometimes, it works)