"The Doug Ford government says its vision for its second term is to get desperately needed homes built in Ontario. In York Region, the key to that vision is a massive pipeline that transfers water from one Great Lake region to another.
Locally, it’s nicknamed the “big pipe,” even though it’s more like a grid of pipes. Mary Muter, chair of the Georgian Bay Great Lakes Foundation, said when the tunnel that hosts the system was being built almost 50 years ago, “You could walk through it.”
The big grid of pipes moves water and sewage in an intricate back-and-forth system between Lake Ontario and York Region, a suburb of 1.17 million people between Toronto and Lake Simcoe. York gets its water for drinking, and flushing toilets, from both Lake Simcoe and Lake Ontario. About 80 per cent of the wastewater produced by York Region travels over 60 kilometres downstream to be cleaned at one of North America’s best sewage treatment facilities, the Duffin Creek Water Pollution Control Plant in neighbouring Durham Region, population 700,000."