The coming system is a paradox for the Sauble businesses. The system to be built is a static system, that is it has capacity to service about 300 existing properties with only a small surplus allotment to handle property improvements and infilling that will not support any development. Static is a term used by engineers meaning "just enough" to do the job. No future capacity exists. This puts a hard cap on any growth in the commercial area. It will remain as a development control area. Dreams of expanding to a Sauble wide system are impossible because the Sauble River, a salmonid spawning stream, cannot assimilate the treated effluent from a larger plant because of seasonal low flow rates net of the Rankin input.

Have you seen the promo picture of children playing in the Sauble Falls? The reason they can play there is that late season flow rates are very low in some years. The old idea of treated effluent from 3500 homes added to existing flow is not acceptable on a number of levels. This was the final detail in a string of political mistakes that killed the original Wiarton pipeline project in 2007. I have a complete record including studies initiated out of concern for river water quality and done before 1990.

ack then cattle access, warm weather and low flow were damaging water quality and limiting the ability of the watershed to support cold water species of fish. This was stated in the Sauble River Watershed Beaches Impact Study. The result in 1989 was the CURB program to try and clean up the Sauble River.

None of these earlier river studies ever envisaged a further damaging contribution of pre warmed water and disolved phosphorous from a sewage treatment plant overwhelming the natural flow. By 2007 two engineering firms had attempted to solve the problem and both failed to complete environmental assessments for area wide wastewater treatment. Only a limited scale restricted system was possible.

Because the current syatem is limited to a small size it is expensive for the properties served and while it is a current choice over septic inspection as one of two ways of protecting the groundwater and the most expensive one it does not meet one of the intrinsic goals of the commercial world, namely area growth and development. Thus the paradox, it is both good and bad at the same time.