Erin WTPP Designation Request Reference No: 81434

Dear Impact Assessment Agency of Canada,

I am writing to express my strong support of the Coalition for the West Credit River in its request for the Erin Wastewater Treatment Plant to be designated as a Project under subsection 9(a) of the Impact Assessment Act.

The West Credit River has some of the most productive Brook Trout spawning reaches and the longest contiguous habitat in the Credit River watershed. Brook trout are a sentinel species signaling cool pristine waters and natural wild spaces. Brook Trout are a highly sensitive coldwater species and their survival relies on stream temperatures no greater than 19 °C to 20 °C for any sustained period of time.

I am opposed to this Project because Erin Council’s sewage plant will place Brook Trout and Redside Dace in the West Credit River in peril by destroying their coldwater habitat.

• Brook trout will not survive for long with over 7 million liters of sewage effluent dumped daily into their West Credit River coldwater habitat.
• Brook Trout and Redside Dace are highly sensitive species that will be subject to warmer stream temperatures, chronic exposures to elevated chloride, and possibly unionized ammonia and pharmaceuticals.
• Cumulative effects in the Environmental Study Report did not address any past, present and planned projects in the subwatershed on the environment, but instead only emphasized the benefits of the Project in replacing leaking septic systems in the community.
• The Environmental Study Report failed to require effluent temperature limits and design objectives in spite of representatives from all three provincial regulatory agencies expressing the need.
• Sewage effluent will create an oxygen depleted and toxic plume that will likely extend several hundred meters downstream into Brook Trout nursery habitat.
• In fact, the Environmental Study Report reported that Brook Trout redds were extremely abundant in the study reach and the study area provides habitat for this critical life state.
• Brook Trout habitat immediately downstream of the sewage discharge location will be made uninhabitable.
• The scope of the ESR was narrow, with inadequate consideration of the expanded population growth and the toll it will take on the West Credit River’s aquatic ecosystem.

I urge you to approve the Coalition’s Designation Request and ensure a full federal review under the Impact Assessment Act. Thank you!

Sincerely,
Lorena Rodriguez

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