Despite being almost completely surrounded by water, upward of 20 per cent of Tiny Township has no fire protection coverage due to the township’s lack of a reliable firefighting water supply.
According to Dave Flewelling, the township’s fire chief, it’s been a long-standing challenge in the township, particularly in areas without existing infrastructure.
However, according to a consultant’s report, that could be rectified as nine locations are recommended for new cisterns and groundwater wells at a cost of $200,000 each, for a total investment of $1.8 million.
At the township’s recent committee of the whole meeting, Flewelling told Tiny council that he drafted a report in 2024 that responded to council’s request at that time to provide options that would improve access to water for firefighting purposes, including the potential for dry hydrants, a non-pressurized, permanently installed pipe system that connects a fire truck to a static water source, such as a lake, to provide a reliable water supply for firefighting in rural areas.
As a result of that report, he said, council directed staff to investigate potential options and their financial ramifications through the 2025 budget process.
Flewelling created another report that responded to council’s request.
Based on that report, council supported a comprehensive study to “better understand our needs and options,” Flewelling told council.
That study, completed by consulting firm Agile Infrastructure out of Hespeler, provides counsel with an independent assessment of the township’s current firefighting waters capabilities, identifies where deficiencies exist and outlines strategies for addressing them over time.
According to Nick Larson, an engineer with Agile, the firm developed a “desktop study” to look at how they could improve firefighting water supply service levels for the township and augment the water master plan to look at firefighting water supply objectives.
“The overall objectives were to look at the coverage deficiencies as it relates to a technical measure that's used in the industry related to the driving distance from an approved water supply,” Larson said, noting the distance is five kilometres to a water facility with greater than one hour of fire/emergency storage at 17 litres/second (1,000 gpm), meaning the tank holds enough water to supply firefighting teams for over an hour at a high, consistent rate during an emergency.
Larson said this ensures security if municipal power or pumps fail. It’s also a requirement through the fire underwriter’s survey accreditation, and that’s what the township holds in order to deliver rural fire protection.
“That's the key technical criteria we were looking at,” Larson said. “From there, we looked at options for how we could improve areas which were not within the five kilometre driving distance of an approved water supply.
“We looked at different options, evaluated those solutions on an area-by-area basis, and ultimately developed a prioritized implementation plan to move forward with the recommended projects,” he added.
Larson said they completed analysis in eight areas where they could identify location options for dry hydrants and cisterns. They prioritized land that is currently owned by the township to minimize disruption to existing landowners and eliminate land acquisition costs.
According to Larson’s colleague and fellow engineer Jody Lee, the township currently has 16 water systems, but only six of them have sufficient existing storage to support fire protection — Bluewater, Georgian Bay Estates, Lafontaine, Perkinsfield, Whippoorwill and Wyevale.
Lee said they considered potential upgrades to the systems that did not have sufficient storage but they were discarded when it was discovered that the upgrades would be “fairly significant” because the systems weren’t originally designed with the intent to provide fire storage.
“To do that, we would need to recommend upgrades to pumping, storage, and likely watermain upgrades as well,” Lee said. “As you can imagine, that would require pretty significant time, effort, and financial investment.”
Lee said the consultants looked at the dry hydrant option with a direct water source connection as well as a dry hydrant with cistern option.
She said the dry hydrant with a direct water source connection to Georgian Bay wouldn’t be feasible or preferred.
“Due to the shallow nature of the shoreline around the township, it would have to be a very long pipe intake,” Lee said. “And the surface water value option also possesses some challenges with seasonality — the water would likely be frozen in the winter so you wouldn’t have year-round access.
“That would pose a limitation,” she added.
She said the dry hydrant with cistern option ended up being the preferred solution township-wide.
“This would be a cistern with the option for either a new groundwater well to refill the cistern or a connection to the existing water system, a potential option that could be reviewed through the detailed design process,” Lee said. “This option is kind of preferred for the financial factor, it’s much more cost effective compared to the previous two options.”
She said the cistern would likely be a prefabricated modular system that could be installed underground, with a dry hydrant for the fire department to hook up to.
Currently, about 83 per cent of the township has target fire protection coverage. If the township adds all nine recommended cisterns, coverage would increase to 97 per cent.
According to Lee, the township has three per cent remaining because it can’t reach those areas by vehicle due to unopened road access.
Tiny council received the report for information.