Ford announces $35M for water treatment facility to support new homes in Mississauga

A water treatment facility expansion in Mississauga is getting a boost with provincial funding.

The G.E. Booth Water Resource Recovery Facility expansion will get $35 million from the province, Premier Doug Ford said Wednesday in a press conference at the facility.

The facility, located at 1300 Lakeshore Rd. E., will support new homes in the area including the massive Lakeview Village development.  Approximately 16,000 homes are expected to built in Lakeview Village.

The water treatment expansion project will provide for 46,784 housing units in the Region of Peel, a press release from the province said.

“We know we need to build more homes, and we know that maintaining and expanding our water wastewater infrastructure is critical to getting those homes built,” Ford said.

The funding will support the extension of water systems and the installation of new features, such as an aeration tank and filtering systems.

Kinga Surma, minister of infrastructure, said the drinking water and wastewater treatment facilities are needed to support the new homes.

“Homes can’t be built without connections to drinking water and wastewater,” Surma said.

Earlier this year, Peel Region council approved $130 million to increase wastewater capacity by 40 million litres per day, at the G.E. Booth Water Resource Recovery Facility. This additional flow capacity can support additional housing units of between 28,000 and 47,000, depending on the type of development.

The G.E. Booth Water Resource Recovery Facility is the Region of Peel’s largest wastewater treatment plant.

The facility originally went into service in 1955 and has undergone multiple expansions. The plant serves the eastern portion of the Region of Peel and part of York Region.

More than $1.8 billion has been allocated in the budget for housing-enabling infrastructure across Ontario.

The $825 million Housing-Enabling Water Systems Fund and the $1 billion Municipal Housing Infrastructure Program that complements funding were announced previously through the province’s Building Faster Fund.

There has been a “significant” demand for water and wastewater infrastructure funding.

In the first round of funding, a total of $970 million will be distributed to 54 projects across 60 municipalities, Ford said.

“All told, this round of funding will help build more than 500,000 new homes in communities across Ontario,” he said.

The full announcement can be viewed here.