People in the Lennoxville area of Sherbooke are fighting to keep their water supply separate from the rest of the city, but Sherbrooke said it doesn’t want to maintain the infrastructure of two different water systems.

The Lennoxville borough gets its water from three wells, but the municipality wants to shut them and provide Lennoxville with water from its main treatment plant.

Lennoxville’s borough president David Price said keeping the borough’s water source was one of the main reasons he ran for office.

”It’s something that I heard on the doorsteps going around,” he said. “Are you going to be there to fight for our water? And absolutely.”

Some businesses in the area also want to keep the water supply as it is.

The head brewer at Lennoxville’s Golden Lion Brewery, Stanley Groves, said most breweries use filtered and chlorinated water to make their beer. But he said using well water is what makes his beer stand out. If the city changes Lennoxville’s water system, he said he will have to go to great lengths to keep the same taste.

”The worry for me is the chlorine and the fluorine,” he said. “We will have to get some filters obviously to remove that flavouring. We may then have to add some powdered minerals to replace the minerals that would be stripped out during the treatment of that water.”

Groves said he would even consider trucking water in from another natural source.

Part of the borough’s water supply will be switched over this summer. The city plans to complete that conversion by 2013.

Print PDF