I share the concerns of the…

I share the concerns of the Save Our Streams Hamilton organization in Hamilton about the detrimental environmental impacts of the Hamilton Golf and Country Club's request to renew its Permit to take Water for commercial (irrigation) purposes.
The scale of the proposal is daunting and merits very serious review by the province. The combined maximum volume requested from water to be taken by this 27-hole course from four wells, two ponds and Ancaster Creek is listed by Save Our Streams as 4.2 Million m3 of water per year for the duration of the 10-year permit. That's far in excess of the 49,161 m3 of water per year used by Hamilton's municipal 36-hole Chedoke Golf Course since 2019, according to Save Our Streams. Those numbers alone underline the need to treat this request with the utmost caution.
The fact that this proposal is a Category 3 request, where "water takings are anticipated to have the highest potential of causing unacceptable environmental impact or interference," demonstrates the importance of finding ways to reduce the volume of water requested by the Hamilton Golf and Country Club in this proposal. In addition, I note research conducted for a thesis at the University of Waterloo in 2014, for example, stating that "premier private and private golf courses were found to use a greater quantity of water during both normal and dry seasons when compared to public and semi-private golf courses."
In the thesis, golf courses were urged to improve their maintenance and irrigation practices to save more water and the province was urged to implement a more strict and automated monitoring system. I fully support these recommendations and urge the province to show leadership in implementing more rigorous environmental standards to better regulate water consumption on golf courses.
In conclusion, I urge the province to examine the request by the Hamilton Golf and Country Club very cautiously and to require the proponent to reduce the volume of water in the requested Permit to a much more environmentally sustainable level.
Thank you.