6- The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday October 13, 2007 www.oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5567 Classified Advertising: 845-3824, ext. 224 Circulation: 845-9742 The Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council. The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone (416) 340-1981. Advertising is accepted on the condition that, in the event of a typographical error, that portion of advertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate. The publisher reserves the right to categorize advertisements or decline. Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Commentary Guest Columnist NEIL OLIVER Publisher JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief ROD JERRED Managing Editor DANIEL BAIRD Advertising Director RIZIERO VERTOLLI Photography Director SANDY PARE Business Manager MARK DILLS Director of Production Metroland Media Group Ltd. includes: Ajax/Pickering News Advertiser, Alliston Herald/Courier, Arthur Enterprise News, Barrie Advance, Caledon Enterprise, Brampton Guardian, Burlington Post, Burlington Shopping News, City Parent, Collingwood/Wasaga Connection, East York Mirror, Erin Advocate/Country Routes, Etobicoke Guardian, Flamborough Review, Georgetown Independent/Acton Free Press, Harriston Review, Huronia Business Times, Lindsay This Week, Markham Economist & Sun, Midland/Penetanguishine Mirror, Milton Canadian Champion, Milton Shopping News, MANUEL GARCIA Production Manager CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution ALEXANDRIA CALHOUN Circ. Manager WEBSITE oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver is a division of IAN OLIVER Group Publisher The comings and goings of water Gary Carr Gary Carr, Halton Regional Chair Media Group Ltd. Mississauga Business Times, Mississauga News, Napanee Guide, Newmarket/Aurora Era-Banner, Northumberland News, North York Mirror, Oakville Beaver, Oakville Shopping News, Oldtimers Hockey News, Orillia Today, Oshawa/Whitby/Clarington Port Perry This Week, Owen Sound Tribune, Palmerston Observer, Peterborough This Week, Picton County Guide, Richmond Hill/Thornhill/Vaughan Liberal, Scarborough Mirror, Stouffville/Uxbridge Tribune, Forever Young, City of York Guardian RECOGNIZED FOR EXCELLENCE BY: Ontario Community Newspapers Association Canadian Community Newspapers Association Suburban Newspapers of America THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: R United Way of Oakville TV AUCTION ecently I had the opportunity to visit our water and wastewater treatment facilities and watched our dedicated and licensed professional staff efficiently providing service to businesses and residents throughout Halton. Providing clean, safe and top-quality drinking water is a commitment Halton Region takes very seriously. Halton's drinking water consistently exceeds the Ontario Drinking Water Standards. The water in your taps starts as either lake water or groundwater. In Oakville, homes and businesses receive lake water. It is treated through a Water Purification Plant (WPP), where it is brought up to drinking water quality. The wastewater from your plumbing system is treated at a Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) to minimize effects on the environment. After full treatment the water is recycled back to the nearby watercourses or the lake. All municipal water and wastewater facilities are monitored regularly in accordance with provincial legislation. How busy are these facilities? Halton's five WPP's provide more than 182,613 cubic metres (2006 Daily Average) of clean, fresh drinking water every day - the equivalent of 73 Olympic sized pools. The seven Halton WWTP's treat almost 213,000 cubic metres of wastewater every day. Halton's water and wastewater facilities operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. To help accommodate future needs we are adding the new Burloak WPP, which is currently under construction and scheduled to be completed in early 2008, to service newly-developed areas in the region. Also underway is the expansion of the MidHalton WWTP with Phase 3 construction scheduled to be completed in late 2009. This phase of the expansion will allow the facility to serve a population of approximately 67,000. Halton undertakes extensive planning to ensure our water and wastewater treatment infrastructure meets the Region's needs now and in the future. Two such initiatives are the South Halton Water and Wastewater Master Plan and Sustainable Halton. The South Halton Water and Wastewater Master Plan was last updated in 2002. It is being updated to 2021 to ensure the water and wastewater infrastructure is adequate to sustain current and future needs in the urban areas of Oakville, Burlington, Milton and the Halton Hills 401 Employment Corridor. Sustainable Halton is developing a blueprint for building sustainable and healthy communities for generations to come. This plan will help the Region meet provincial requirements of both the Greenbelt and Growth Plans, and assist in developing Halton's next official plan. For more information or to find out how you can contribute, visit www.halton.ca/sustainablehalton. Though it may seem we may have an endless supply of drinking water in Halton, water is a precious resource and we encourage everyone to be water wise both inside and outside the home. By conserving water we can help preserve this resource for future generations. For more information call 905-825-6000 for your copy of the Household Guide to Water Efficiency, free of charge or visit www.halton.ca/waterconservation. To learn more about Halton's water and wastewater treatment process, visit www.halton.ca/water. The adolescent in all of us who simply refuses to grow up Novelist Jonathan Franzen recently turned 48, but in his intimate and engaging memoir, The Discomfort Zone, he maintains that he continues to have a 17-year-old living inside him. Now, I have an actual 17-year-old living inside my house -- which affords me a wealth of knowledge (albeit precious little understanding) of this enigmatic subspecies known as the teenage male -- so I can empathize with the acclaimed American author. "Almost daily," Franzen writes, "I lose battles with the 17year-old who's still inside me. I eat half a box of Oreos for lunch, I binge on TV, I make sweeping moral judgments, I run around in torn jeans, I drink martinis on a Tuesday night, I stare at beercommercial cleavage, I define as uncool any group to which I can't belong, I feel the urge to key Range Rovers and slash their tires." Thirty-one-years ago when Franzen was actually 17, he pined for adulthood. He "hated being young." And in his account of growing up middle-class in middle America, the author who is best known for his 2001 blockbuster, The Corrections (chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 greatest novels of all-time), insightfully noted: "Adolescence is best enjoyed without self-consciousness, but self-consciousness, unfortunately, is its leading symptom." To make matters more confusing, when Franzen was a youth he maintains that he had a 50-year-old boy living in him. It was this 50-year-old boy who took the youthful edge off a prank he and his friends played when they took every stick of furniture in their school and piled it all in one classroom. End of prank? Not a chance. Armed with an overgrown conAndy Juniper science, some masking tape and markers, the 50-year-old Franzen felt compelled to label each item: so the custodial crew would know where everything belonged. Frankly, I think there's a little Jonathan Franzen (ages 50 and 17) in all of us. I know when I was a teen, I could not wait to grow up. I listened to the Beach Boys and nodded in agreement when they sang, "Wouldn't it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn't have to wait so long..." Like George Bernard Shaw famously quipped: "Youth is wasted on the young." Honestly, adolescence simply frustrated me. All through my childhood I felt ready to take the plunge in the adult pool to act like an adult and to be treated like one. Now, at age never-you-mind, I find the restless teenager who resides within me making more and more guest appearances in my life, much to the chagrin of my kids. Like Franzen, I lose daily battles with the 17-year-old who's still inside me. I'll scarf down a bag of potato chips and then complain to the dogs (because they're the only ones who'll listen) that my heartburn's acting up. I'll chew an entire pack of gum, until my jaw aches and I give myself a headache. I run around in torn jeans, but only when I want to feel dressed up usually I can be found around the house, in all seasons, in a pair of paint-splattered jogging shorts. I binge on TV. But more often I binge on music, long and loud CD sessions with obscure bands I've tracked down, and sometimes those sessions are accompanied (to the horror of my kids) by...solo dancing. I skip out of work every week to play golf. I skip out to see movies. And on and on. From my vantage point, 17-year-olds are curious and intense and emotional and less predictable than autumn weather. And when you get to be my age, those are traits well worth emulating. Even if such behaviour does send your offspring into The Discomfort Zone. Andy Juniper can be visited at his Web site, www.strangledeggs.com, or contacted at ajuniper@strangledeggs.com