The Ontario Ministry of the Environment has now approved Terms of Reference in 18 of Ontario’s Source Water Protection areas. Under the Clean Water Act, this allows source protection committees in most areas of the province to move on to formal assessments of threats to drinking water quality and quantity from a wide range of current land uses in sensitive areas. After the threat assessments, the source protection committees will prepare source protection plans, which will trump all current land-use designations, such as official plans, in areas such as wellhead protection zones.
