2nd Turtle Creek dam to double Moncton water supply

Construction will be starting soon on a $31.2-million dam that will more than double the supply of drinking water in the greater Moncton area.

The second dam and reservoir project was announced on Monday morning with representatives from the federal, provincial and local governments. The federal and provincial governments will each pay $9.79 million and Moncton will pay the remaining $11.6 million.

The dam's construction is to begin in late 2009 and be completed in 2012.

The Turtle Creek reservoir is already dammed and the improvements are designed to meet the future needs of residents in Moncton, Riverview and Dieppe.

"This project is very important," Moncton Mayor George LeBlanc said in a statement.

"A clean, safe, reliable water supply is absolutely essential to the prosperity and quality of our great communities."

Plans to build a second dam on Turtle Creek have been in the works since a water shortage in 2001.

Greg Thompson, the province's senior federal cabinet minister, said the second dam will allow Moncton to keep growing.

"The existing dam and reservoir at Turtle Creek were only designed to serve about 80,000 residents. This project will increase Turtle Creek's capacity to serve up to 175,000 people and that will dramatically improve the ability of Moncton, Dieppe and Riverview to provide for both the current and future demand for clean drinking water," Thompson said.

Greater Moncton grew by 6.5 per cent from 2001 to 2006, according to Statistics Canada, pushing the local population to 126,424.

Concern over loss of habitat

However, Tim Van Hinte, a spokesman for the Petitcodiac Riverkeeper, a local environmental group, said he was opposed to the dam project.

He said 30 square kilometres of fish habitat and 12 hectares of wetland will be lost.

Van Hinte said he wonders if investing in water conservation would be a better way to spend $31 million.

"If you need X number of million of litres of water and you're going to build a dam and it costs $30 million, well what does it cost to reduce that equivalent amount of demand or that equivalent amount of litres of water," Van Hinte said.

"Does it cost $30 million? Does it cost more? Does it cost less?"

Van Hinte said finding out how much it would cost to install low flow toilets and showerheads in every home would have been a good start. 

Now Van Hinte said he is working with all three levels of government to compensate for the land and fish habitat that will be destroyed when the dam is built.