2011 Municipal Water Use Report – Municipal Water Use 2009 Statistics

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Survey highlights

Most Canadians are served piped water and water treatment

In 2009, 1590 municipalities--representing 28.9 million Canadians--provided information on the number of people in their jurisdiction who obtained water from a public-serving water distribution system (i.e., piped water), from private wells and through water haulage (i.e., trucked water). Of this population, a large majority (88.9%) is served by a water distribution system, with 10.5% on private wells and 0.6% receiving trucked water.

The 2009 MWWS surveyed a sample of 1000 municipalities with population below 1000 people, out of a total of 3317 municipalities of that size that exist in Canada. Since many small municipalities do not have water systems at all, it is likely that the total percent of Canadians on private wells and water haulage is somewhat higher than that reported here.

 

Table 1: Residential Water Services, by Province/Territory
and Municipal Population

  Number of responding municipalities Responding population Population served water distribution Percent of the population that is served water distribution Percent of the population that is on private wells Percent of the population that is on water haulage
Newfoundland and Labrador 55 363 817 343 621 94.4% 5.6% 0.0%
Prince Edward Island 10 63 805 55 179 86.5% 13.5% 0.0%
Nova Scotia 31 791 167 473 853 59.9% 39.5% 0.6%
New Brunswick 65 409 857 319 245 77.9% 22.1% 0.0%
Quebec 579 6 601 881 5 943 173 90.0% 10.0% 0.0%
Ontario 247 12 297 845 11 023 461 89.6% 10.1% 0.2%
Manitoba 102 1 002 380 888 553 88.6% 10.1% 1.2%
Saskatchewan 192 497 027 452 920 91.1% 7.7% 1.2%
Alberta 183 3 492 769 3 125 871 89.5% 8.6% 1.9%
British Columbia 112 3 308 751 3 018 321 91.2% 7.9% 0.9%
Territories 14 55 391 42 605 76.9% 3.8% 19.3%
 
Municipal Population            
Under 1000 475 253 299 127 178 50.2% 47.3% 2.5%
1001–2000 318 461 438 254 205 55.1% 42.9% 2.0%
2001–5000 302 995 347 660 568 66.4% 32.6% 1.1%
5001–50 000 418 5 922 662 4 269 995 72.1% 26.1% 1.8%
50 001–500 000 67 9 944 049 9 281 803 93.3% 6.5% 0.2%
More than
500 000
10 11 307 895 11 093 052 98.1% 1.8% 0.1%
Total, 2009 1 590 28 884 690 25 686 801 88.9% 10.5% 0.6%
Total, 2006 1 314 28 177 339 25 472 314 90.4%*    

Source: 2009 MWWS. Aggregated to municipal level and imputed for non-response using 2006 MWWS. Sustainable Water Management Division, Environment Canada.

* The values for 2009 are not directly comparable with the results from 2006 due to a change in the way the data was analyzed. The 2009 results are based on the entire municipal population, while the 2006 results are based only on the population in municipalities that have water distribution systems.

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Of the population served piped water, 94.0% are also served water treatment. Smaller municipalities are more likely not to have treated water. The proportion of the population served water that is also served water treatment varies from 75.3% in municipalities under 1 000 population to 99.6% in municipalities of over 500 000 people.

 

Chart 1: Percent of Population Served Water that Is Also Served Water Treatment

 

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