28 | harrowsmithmag.com
By mid-August, water (the
lack of it) is all the talk again,
when corn crops droop and grassy
lawns go yellow due to weeks
without rainfall. Where I live, in
Prince Edward County, Ontario,
the soil is a very thin layer atop
limestone bedrock. Groundwater
is essentially just surface water
that seeps through the fragmented
sedimentary rock. Rural residents
have to truck their water into a
cistern when the wells go dry.
The County’s municipal water
is drawn from Lake Ontario, but
even the Great Lakes’ levels have
been rising and dropping in recent
years. Wide fluctuations in weather
and climate now have to be taken
into consideration when managing
water resources. Urban areas
on both sides of the U.S.-Canada
border are expanding and drawing
water out of the Great Lakes. This
incredible reservoir of fresh water
is coveted around the globe but
vulnerable to contamination and
exploitation.
Ontario has been the envy of
other jurisdictions, not only for
nature’s endowment of a quarter
of a million untainted northern
lakes, but also for its bold and
pioneering regulations to protect
drinking water. Since the 1940s, a
network of regional conservation
authorities has been responsible for
“programs and services that further
the conservation, restoration,
development and management of
natural resources in watersheds
in Ontario,” according to the
Conservation Authorities Act.
After the Walkerton, Ontario,
disaster in 2000, when citizens died
and many became chronically ill
from E. coli and other pathogenic
bacteria in their drinking water,
the Clean Water Act, 2006,
was enacted, spurring a major
environmental protection initiative
that resulted in 38 source protection
plans for 17 regions across the
province. With guidance from the
Ministry of Environment, eachsource protection committee
met monthly to work with
source protection authority
(conservation authority) staff to
write and implement a customized
source protection plan. Each
committee was multidisciplinary,
with representatives from
municipalities, agriculture,
industry and the general population,
and they used a science-based
approach to safeguard the sources
of drinking water with real
legislative teeth to enforce it.
For instance, some plans
prohibit certain land uses and
farm practices, such as spreading
manure or storing petroleum within
a defined distance of a wellhead
(known as a wellhead protection
area around a municipality’s well)
or within an intake protection
zone (where drinking water is
drawn from off-shore). In the caseAccording to the United Nations, “Wetlands, amongst
the world’s most economically valuable ecosystems
and essential regulators of the global climate, are
disappearing three times faster than forests.”