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The wet summer of 2008 might have made Ontarians forget, but dry, drought conditions can be expected more often in the years ahead as global warming worsens, the province’s environmental commissioner says.
The provincial government will have to take action to restrict water use when things get really bad, said Gordon Miller, the province’s independent environmental watchdog.
So far, the province has never sounded the alarm and cut off water use, the most stringent measure outlined in the province’s 2001 Ontario Low Water Shortage Plan.
Miller said water restrictions should have been announced during the drought conditions of summer 2007 in Ontario where at least two streams — Spencer Creek near Hamilton and Innisfil Creek near Alliston — dried up, Miller said.
“We’ve got to wake up,” Miller told a group from the Niagara Woodlot Association and Niagara College environmental program students on Saturday afternoon.
“Climate change is making things hotter and drier nearly every year. We have to get used to the fact that droughts are real in Ontario and they’re going to continue to occur from time to time. If we’re going to have a drought response, it’s got to be a proper one.”
Ontarians continue to believe that the province has a limitless amount of water, and that’s not true, Miller said during his speech at Niagara College’s Niagara-on-the-Lake campus.
The government needs to raise charges on companies who use water commercially, Miller said, including those that bottle water. Currently, industrial users pay one cent per 3,000 litres of water.
“Personally, I think that’s a little light.”
Miller said homeowners are not being charged enough for water and sewer services to ensure municipalities have enough cash to improve and repair infrastructure to safeguard local water supplies.
Most municipalities subsidize services through property taxes and provincial grants, and some don’t invest enough in water and sewer infrastructure to cut costs.
Miller also addressed the issue of highways, which he said become a barrier to wildlife and plants confined by the asphalt surface.
Asked for his thoughts about Niagara’s proposed mid-peninsula corridor, Miller said he’s not a protester, but questions the use of such a highway.
The controversial highway would stretch from the Greater Toronto Area to the U. S. border at Fort Erie and is touted as a way of moving goods.
Miller questions why a corridor designed to improve shipping need interchanges.
Development seems to boom around highway exits, he said. Nixing interchanges would help protect rural lands, he said.
“It means it would sterilize from sprawl all that land adjacent to it.”
Conserving water, increasing biodiversity and improving the province’s air quality index to measure bad air in cities are all addressed in Miller’s annual report to government.
The 240-page document, titled Getting to K(no)w, was released last month.