Celebrating Public Works Week 2025 (YouTube video link)
From the moment you turn on your tap in the morning to the smooth ride on your commute home, Halton Region’s Public Works team is working quietly behind the scenes to ensure that critical infrastructure and essential services are available when you need them.
Whether it's ensuring safe, high-quality drinking water, collecting your waste, and providing waste diversion and reduction programs, collecting and treating wastewater, or maintaining the roads that connect us all, our team plays an important role in your daily life.
These are the people out in all weather conditions, repairing watermains, patching roads, managing our waste sites, and keeping critical systems functioning no matter the hour or challenge. They’re the front-line problem solvers who answer the call when infrastructure needs attention, often before most of us notice an issue.
But many don’t see the equally vital work happening beyond the front lines. Behind every successful repair, new road, or clean drop of water is a network of professionals ensuring that systems, standards, and strategies are in place. These behind-the-scenes experts support staff training and certifications, coordinate permits, conduct inspections, monitor quality, and lead the planning and delivery of complex infrastructure projects that help support the growth in our community.
Our Public Works team includes engineers, project managers, water and wastewater operators, millwrights, electricians, instrument technicians, environmental lab analysts, waste diversion coordinators, inspectors, foresters, service permit coordinators, planners and many others. Together, this dedicated and diverse group is responsible for making sure you can live your life without having to worry about some of the key programs and services that you use every day.
By the numbers: What does it take to keep a region running?
While much of the work is done without fanfare, the scale and impact of Public Works are best understood through numbers. Whether looking at the kilometres of roads maintained to the millions of litres of water treated daily, the stats tell a powerful story about the scope of services delivered and the incredible effort it takes to keep them going.
2024 Snapshot: PW in action
Road operations managed and maintained 1,171 lane KMs of roads, 186 bridges and culverts and 7,249 streetlights.
Wastewater collection manages 1,987 KMs of sewers, including gravity sewers, forcemains, inline storage and siphons along with 82 wastewater pumping stations and over 29,000 maintenance holes.
Wastewater treatment operates six wastewater treatment plants and treats 89,039 ML of wastewater (equal to 35,6161 Olympic-sized swimming pools).
Water treatment operates 12 water treatment facilities, 3 surface water plants and 9 ground water facilities.
Source protection maintains 22 drinking water reservoirs and regularly checks 140 monitoring wells.
Water Systems distributed more than 65,861 ML of safe, clean drinking water (equal to 26,344 Olympic-sized swimming pools).
Waste Services coordinated the weekly collection of recycling and organics, and bi-weekly collection of garbage, bulk waste, yard waste and metal items for 230,000+ residential dwellings, 8 BIA's, and 2,000 commercial locations.
The Halton Waste Management Site saw over 260,000 visitors to their site to divert and dispose of waste, including the Hazard Waste Depot, Reuse Centre and Paint and Stain Depot. They coordinated several diversion events like the Scouts tree planting, the annual compost giveaway, and special waste drop-off days in each municipality.
Development Services commented on over 1,000 development applications, processed over 850 permits, and completed 3,200 permit inspections.
Compliance team supported and delivered 450 MECP certificates and licenses, over 25,000 hours of PW training hours, and over 14,000 hours of OHS training hours.
To every member of our Public Works family, thank you. We appreciate and value your contributions every day and celebrate Public Works week with you!