“The water crisis is essentially a crisis of governance.”
Source protection committees across Ontario are labouring on their threat assessments, the second of three phases under the Clean Water Act. Years and millions of dollars from now, each source protection authority will adopt and implement an elaborate source protection plan. But, in the ongoing fallout of Ontario’s unfortunate response to the Walkerton water disaster, the objective of each of these plans will be too narrow: protecting the immediate vicinity of sources of drinking water.
Watersheds have many “functions” other than providing drinking water, and they cannot be successfully managed with blinders on:
“Establishing limits and recognizing ecosystems as legitimate “users” of finite water resources are critical steps toward sustainable water management…[there is a] need for a broader dialogue on developing sustainability – the process through which ecological principles become embedded in institutions and decision making….”
Why spend so much time and money on narrowly focused drinking water source plans when what we need are sustainable watershed plans?
Some Canadian charities are trying to change this. For example, Pollution Probe published its New approach to water management in Canada – vision and strategy in 2008. The University of Victoria published At a watershed: Governance and Sustainable Water Management in Canada in 2005.
The Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation is funding a fascinating program on Watershed Governance, to encourage policies and programs that foster an integrated watershed approach that embeds conservation and demand management as the foundation of water management.
Ducks Unlimited and the Calgary Foundation worked with four provincial bodies and Environment Canada to create From the Mountains to the Sea – the State of the Saskatchewan River Basin Report (www.saskriverbasin.ca). More than 3 million people live within the Saskatchewan River Basin, an international watershed stretching over all three Prairie Provinces and Montana. The ambitious report and its maps trace the entire 1940 km length of the river, describing its geology, climate, hydrology, water quality, water use and ecosystems, and the human and other impacts on them.
The impressive Report ends by calling for integrated water resources management for the basin as a whole, recognizing that this will be hard to achieve:
Integrated water resources management cannot be achieved quickly or without difficulty. … Drawing a circle around water-related activity in a basin will inevitably result in a series of intersecting circles around water and other activities, such as land management, energy, wildlife, fisheries and so on. …
Traditional water management emphasized problem solving, but the solution to one problem was often accompanied by unintended consequences. … The water resources of the basin are finite. Meeting future challenges will depend not only on better scientific understanding and technological improvements, but also on institutional development that encourages integrated and adaptive approaches to water management. These approaches require legislative and policy support, appropriate science, monitoring and data, and a basin-scale or sub-basin- scale institutional framework that accommodates various interests.
In 2009, Ontario became the proud possessor of one (1) sustainable and enforceable watershed plan. Lake Simcoe and its Watershed was a 2008 compendium prepared by the Lake Simcoe Science Advisory Committee. They concluded that urgent action was needed to protect the popular, crowded lake just north of Toronto. The province responded with a one-of-a-kind statute, the Lake Simcoe Protection Act, plus a special regulation on phosphorus in municipal effluent.
Because the Lake Simcoe watershed is located within Ontario, the Act allowed the provincial Cabinet to establish and enforce a Lake Simcoe Protection Plan for the entire watershed: http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/en/water/lakesimcoe/index.php. The Plan’s objectives go far beyond drinking water, and include:
- water quality and pollution,
- natural heritage features and their functions,
- hydrologic features and their functions;
- a self-sustaining coldwater fishery;
- invasive species
- capacity to adapt to climate change;
- scientific research and monitoring
- environmentally sustainable recreation, and
- environmentally sustainable land and water uses, activities and development practices.
The plan binds municipalities, developers and the Ontario Municipal Board, and prevails over official plans, zoning bylaws and most other legislation. The Plan may eventually be expanded to cover all or part of adjacent watersheds. Meanwhile, the Lake Simcoe Science Committee is responsible for monitoring the health of the Lake Simcoe watershed. A Lake Simcoe Coordinating Committee “co-ordinates implementation of the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan” and advises the Minister on resolving the many conflicting interests and turfs that collide over the Lake.Meanwhile, source protection committees in other watersheds labour onward, lashed to the single mandate of drinking water protection.
It is probably no coincidence that Lake Simcoe has Ontario’s first sustainable watershed protection plan. The Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority has done an outstanding job studying and advocating for their watershed, and building bridges with other stakeholders. The LSRCA received international recognition for its efforts when it received the 2009 International Thiess Riverprize (details at http://www.lsrca.on.ca/thiess/index.html). And, of course, it got its very own statute.
But Lake Simcoe is not the only watershed that requires such protection, and we cannot reasonably leave the job to charities. A good place to start would be federal or provincial laws like the US House of Representatives draft Sustainable Watershed Planning Act. This Act would promote full water accounting, increased water efficiency, better planning across jurisdictions and more study of the relationships between human needs, hydrologic conditions, climate change and ecological health. The US government would provide funds for sustainable watershed studies and planning, especially to 10 regions willing to pilot regional watershed plans. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Partners for the Saskatchewan River Basin ran one of those pilot projects. After all, the River runs through Montana….
This article was originally prepared for the January issue of Water Canada magazine, published by the graceful and kind Kerry Freek.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Dianne,
I read your recent article on Source Protection in Ontario with great interest. I am a Source Protection Committee member, and it is frustrating work. The process is so prescribed that it doesn’t really permit the local committee to protect its watershed. For example there is a quarry in our watershed that has been in operation for so long, that they have broken through the aquitard into the aquifer that a nearby large municipality uses for its drinking water. The City wants the quarry to stop digging, but they and the Source Protection Committee are powerless. You would think this is readily identifiable as a threat to water quality, since contaminants (e.g. bird droppings) from the surface water of the quarry can come into contact with the groundwater used as drinking water. But quarrying is not on the MOE’s list of activities that represent significant threats to water quality or quantity.
Another example is water bottling. A large water bottling operation draws 1.5 billion liters per year of water from the same aquifer as a nearby city. This water is mainly exported out of the watershed, often out of the province, and occasionally out of the country! Yet the Source Protection Committee is powerless to stop this. Water bottling is not listed as a significant threat to water quantity! Water bottling is also contrary to all of the Statements of Environmental Values in the Environmental Bill of Rights (i.e. Conservation, pollution reduction, benefit of public resource for current and future generations, etc.)
The SPC process is also painfully slow; the committee is so large and diverse in terms of stakeholder constitution, that it is difficult to get anything done. In addition, the documentation produced is so large, it is virtually impossible to read all the consultants’ reports unless one devotes oneself to the task full-time. But committee membership is a volunteer appointment, and almost all the members have full-time jobs.
Sorry for venting, but your article struck a chord with me about how the outcome of the Walkerton tragedy and the excellent report by Justice O’Connor has created an ineffective policy and program.
Happy New Year!
-Anonymous
Part 2 of 2
On another front, the OHI, the Water Caucus of the Ontario Environment Network, and groups such the Water Guardians Network are pursuing improved collaboration between large and small water-based NGOs in the province. Legal and policy staff in the former tend to focus on issues such as the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and the Clean Water Act, with limited awareness of regional permitting practices or which local creeks or wetlands may be running dry. Small, volunteer groups, meanwhile, try to champion local ecological integrity while sometimes being unable to cite provincial regulations or command attention in an arena too often influenced by the allure of development and increased taxes. Better coordination would benefit all of society.
The nice thing about IWM is that it includes collaboration on science, policy, governance, economics, and social engagement. We think it deserves expanded discussion in Ontario and thank you again for the article.
Andrew McCammon
Executive Director
Ontario Headwaters Institute
Part 1 of 2
In addition to extending thanks for the timely and much appreciated Real protection of watersheds, please allow me to try to add some information.
In May, 2009, Conservation Ontario conducted an excellent symposium on Integrated Watershed Management (IWM), including updates from Europe, Australia, the US, and western Canada. Presentations can be found at http://www.iwmsymposium.ca, with additional research to be posted shortly.
During and shortly after the symposium, the Ontario government indicated that its committee of water directors is contemplating the future application of IWM in Ontario. Then, in October of 2009, Ontario endorsed CCME’s Canada-wide Vision for Water. The Ontario Headwater Institute (OHI) was pleased to see that the Vision includes a commitment to protect watersheds through community-based IWM, and is pursuing more information on its implementation plan, due in the fall of 2010.
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