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.
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