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Ottawa Riverkeeper participated in the very productive, day-long Ottawa consultation on 8 March 2004. We emphasized that by protecting and enhancing ecological functions within watersheds we are not only safeguarding public health but maintaining the value of what is also an increasingly important economic commodity.
The White Paper presents ideas and options for watershed protection and planning in Ontario. It formed the basis for discussions at a number of invited consultations around the province.
Highlights include:
The White Paper is not without glitches and concerns. Some of these are summarized in our letter to Minister of the Environment Leona Dombrowsky (letter is included below). Key among them is the need for a more scientifically realistic definition of the Ontario watershed of the Ottawa River (it is presently divided between north and southern Ontario administrative units) and the need to move expeditiously on this (no firm timetable is presented). It serves no-one’s long term interests to move slowly in having effective, practical watershed and source water protection measures in place.
This initiative likely constitutes the most significant advance in water source protection in Ontario since the establishment in Conservation Authorities in the late 1940s. Ottawa Riverkeeper will of course continue to be closely involved with this process. It is also very important that individual Ontario citizens within the Ottawa River watershed become familiar with what’s being discussed (the language of the White Paper is quite readable) and let their MPPs know of their concerns.
Letter to the minister of the environment
Leona Dombrowsky,
Minister of the Environment,
12th Floor, 135 St. Clair Avenue West,
Toronto, Ontario M4V 1P5
Re: Watershed-based Source Protection Planning White Paper
Dear Ms. Dombrowsky;
We participated in the recent Ottawa consultation concerning the Source Protection White Paper as part of your Ministry’s development of a comprehensive source water protection plan for Ontario. We wish to congratulate MOE for initiating this important program and the valuable White Paper consultations associated with it. We were particularly pleased to note that those conducting the consultations were MOE personnel involved in drafting the White Paper, not hired facilitators. This underscores the serious nature of the subject and seriousness with which your Ministry is addressing the subject. It was not lost on the Ottawa consultation participants that people in Ontario had died before such an initiative got under way.
Many valuable and perceptive comments were passed on to the MOE personnel during the Ottawa consultation. We want to emphasis a couple of the most important of these directly to you which we believe to be of particular importance to the citizens of the Ottawa River.
Firstly, it is critical that Ontario source protection planning understands and explicitly states that water is not just a commodity. That recognition is consistent with our letter to you of 19 December 2003 concerning the Ontario moratorium on water-taking permits. A broader perspective emphasizing the maintenance and enhancement of ecological functions within watersheds, is essential to the protection of public health,. It also is necessary in order to satisfy other important aspects of the Ontario Planning Act’s 1999 Provincial Policy Statement which is becoming an increasingly significant municipal planning tool. Our commitment to an ecosystem-based approach to watershed management needs to be more explicitly expressed and applied throughout the documentation of source protection planning in Ontario. As it presently appears in the White Paper, however, one could be left with the misguided belief that this is a discussion of commodity market share and pricing amongst traders. Fresh water, of course, is so much more than that.
Secondly, the proposed treatment of the Ottawa River watershed is both uniquely inaccurate and inappropriate. The Ottawa River constitutes the largest watershed in Ontario outside of the Hudson Bay Basin. It is also proposed to be the only watershed in the province split between the distinctly different management standards and practices regimes identified for northern and southern Ontario. Aside from setting the stage for serious communications and management problems, this implies serious inconsistencies and contradictions for science-based decision-making within what in reality is a single watershed. This also contradicts the White Paper’s own acknowledgement that “watersheds are generally considered to be the most practical unit for managing water…
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