On November 21, 2009 Thirsty City Walks and Workshops launched a new walk titled "Toilet to Tap". On this day, we held a bus tour and workshop to celebrate the new guide and to commemorate World Toilet Day. The new guide will be available online as a virtual tour or downloadable self-guided tour on Tuesday, December 9th.

The "Toilet to Tap" walk takes place in the Beach neighourbood of Toronto and takes one on a tour from Ashbridge's Bay Sewage Treatment Plant to the R.C Harris Drinking Water Filtration Plant. It explores the history of drinking water and sanitation systems in Toronto by using the development of the Beach neighbourhood as an example.

Our launch event was an exciting opportunity to take the "Toilet to Tap" bus tour (instead of a walk) and attend a workshop to explore some ideas in more depth. The bus tour followed a special route from the Ashbridge's Bay Sewage Treatment Plant to the R.C. Harris Drinking Filtration Plant. Zigzagging through the beautiful Beach neighbourhood, we explored its history and looked for signs of original natural features in this human-altered landscape.

The workshop that followed featured two guest speakers and a discussion facilitated by Youth4Water. Nicholas Schulz, a communications coordinator for the CTC Source Water Protection Region provided an overview of recent developments within the region in regards to source water protection and the Clean Water Act. He stressed the importance of public participation and outlined different venues to get involved.

Andrew Hellebust of Rivercourt Engineering discussed alternatives to our current sanitary and drinking water systems. He suggested a 'distributed' water infrastructure which accomodates both centralized and decentralized water and waste water approaches. Centralized water and waste water system is comprised of features such as sewage treatment plants and water filtration plants where collection, treatment and disposal takes place far away from individual homes.  De-centralized water and waste water approaches can be defined as the localized collection, treatment and reuse of water and waste water from individual homes. Some examples of de-centralized system features are composting toilets, green roofs, rainwater harvesting, and onsite ultraviolet disinfection of water.

Youth4Water, a group that gathers youth to explore local and global water problems, facilitated a discussion with the audience. We shared our perceptions of Toronto's drinking water and sewage treatment and brainstormed things that both homeowners and apartment building tenants could do to protect and improve Toronto's water.

Links:
CTC Source  Protection Region: http://www.ctcswp.ca/ 
Rivercourt Engneering: http://www.rivercourt.ca/ 
Youth4Water: http://unac-y4w.org/

Contact RiverSides:
Email: info@thirstycitywalks.ca