Uninformed people think we in Canada will never run out of fresh groundwater. Wrong. It is not inexhaustible. International firms now see Canada’s water as a valuable natural resource they can harvest. Large companies are buying land worldwide to privatize and sell water to ordinary citizens, or to use it in manufacturing.

When the groundwater we all use is depleted, it will be gone — there are already huge groundwater shortages in China, Africa, India, Australia and in the U.S.A. People are dying for lack of fresh water. Crops are unsustainable, especially with climate change and droughts. Just Google “worldwide water shortages” if you want facts about water shortages in China, India, Australia, Africa and the U.S.A.

One large multinational company that hopes to harvest Guelph’s pristine drinking ground water to use in manufacturing is the Xinyi Glass company. It has tentatively purchased a 121-acre farm bordered by Highways 124 and 32, just outside the city limits of the City of Guelph.

As citizens are learning, Xinyi plans to build a massive, highly mechanized factory, seven storeys high, which will suck up 1.6-million litres of water per day from our aquifers. They plan to drill 600-foot wells into the Guelph-Eramosa formation. Our private wells in the township are all around 50 to 100 feet deep. Aquifers are connected, with fractures that allow seepage down. This endangers our wells, as well as the City of Guelph’s Queensdale well (230 feet deep and already "unsustainable"), which is nearest to the proposed Xinyi site.

What astonished the Township of Guelph-Eramosa residents was that the City of Guelph’s chief administrative officer, Derrick Thomson, wrote the township Mayor Chris White and chief administrative officer Ian Roger on May 9, but White did not read this letter, he says, for nearly six weeks.

White was on record as early as March, calling this Xinyi plant proposal a “game-changer.” White has now heard from many of his constituents. He has also now read the letter from the City of Guelph, saying that there are deep reservations about this Xinyi plant proposal. Here’s part of what Thomson wrote to GET:

“A water-taking of this magnitude has the potential to create well interference effects on the city water supply wells and in particular, our Queensdale well … the closest well to the plant ... The amount of water use proposed is significant, especially considering local water system impacts ... the city is not clear on how the proposed use meets the intent of County Official Plan policy 6.7.9 ...”

Thomson adds: “The report relies on future technical studies to be addressed through site plan approval and the permit-to-take-water process. Neither of these processes is an appropriate forum for determining permissions. It is the city’s view that the planning justification needs to directly address how a use that requires such a large water-taking can be considered “dry” in the context of the County Official Plan and GET zoning bylaw ….”

He also mentions many other serious concerns: “wastewater treatment and disposal, increased traffic, air pollution and emergency response ...”

Get more information about the Xinyi project on GETconcerned.org; read about Coun. David Wolk’s notice of motion for the July 16 council meeting to be held at the Parkwood Community Church at 7 p.m.