Magog sets aside funding for institutional, mixed use water meters

The City of Magog has set aside $1.1 million in its budget to equip all industrial, commercial and institutional (ICI) buildings as well as mixed buildings, on its territory with a water meter.

According to the Director of the city’s Environment and Spatial Planning, Marco Prévost, the decision stems from a government requirement under the Québec Drinking Water Strategy. That all municipalities with a leakage rate greater than 20 per cent in their network and / or per capita consumption of 410 liters or more per inhabitant per day are obliged to equip their ICI buildings and their mixed buildings with measuring equipment. A mixed-use building is a residential building, of which part is used for commercial purposes.

"In Magog, our leakage rate is about 3 per cent based on theoretical data, but our daily consumption is 444 litres," Prévost says. “That's why we have to move forward, especially since the government is giving itself the right to withhold any financial assistance, such as a subsidy, as long as the meters are not installed."

It is estimated that there are between 500 and 600 ICI and mixed-use buildings within the city’s boundaries, of which some have already been equipped with a meter, which means that the costs of the deployment could be lower than expected. "The $1.1 million is the worst-case scenario; that is, that we would have to buy a new meter for all of them, using the most expensive technology. We prefer to provide more money than not enough," he adds

Prévost points out that the purpose of this deployment is to have better data on the actual consumption of drinking water so that among other things, we can better deploy information and awareness campaigns.