Quebec has lifted the veil of secrecy around the province's biggest water users, revealing that billions of litres of water are withdrawn yearly by the mining and metal industry, along with pulp and paper manufacturing.
The data dump, which includes records going back a decade, also lists golf clubs, ski hills, water bottling plants and food processors among the companies that are withdrawing tens of millions — sometimes hundreds of millions — of litres in a year.
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Rio Tinto's water use in 2022 would fill 29,000 Olympic pools
Overall, in terms of total withdrawals reported in Quebec, the City of Montreal was the biggest water user in 2022, the most recent year available in the dataset. The city of more than two million people reported withdrawing a whopping 559.2 billion litres of water for various services, including its aqueduct network, botanical gardens and recreational operations.
