Image above: Humber River winding through Bolton. Photo credit: Patti Foley.
Deeply concerned that Ontario is cascading toward extensive tipping points in watershed health, the Ontario Watershed Guardian Network today released an inaugural list of Watersheds at Risk, which will only become more wide-spread and more severe without significant provincial and municipal action.
Launched in August, the Network advocates for the health of our watersheds, including ground-water and abundant, clean drinking water, and is directed by a steering committee of leaders from six highly-respected environmental organizations.
Over the last several years, Ontario has launched numerous efforts, primarily under its Housing Action Plan, to facilitate development while reducing environmental protection that it has frequently called “red tape”.
Negative impacts of these efforts include reduced mandates for our conservation authorities and the evaporation of wetland policies; the dilution of safeguards with respect to aggregate extraction and endangered species; class approvals for forestry that undermine environmental protection; and efforts to undermine the normal community-engagement planning process through Strong Mayor Powers, a record number of Minister’s Zoning Orders, and the establishment of Special Planning Areas.
Over the same period, Ontario has encouraged sprawl over sustainable planning; expanding municipal boundaries, often against municipal preferences and while reducing urban density; has sought to outlaw green development standards; has ignored the need to require action when Provincial Water Quality Objectives are exceeded; and, even as flooding is becoming more frequent, took climate change out of the section on watershed planning in the Provincial Planning Statement.
In addition, Ontario has removed long-standing legal rights by placing restrictions on who can appeal to the Ontario Land Tribunal. The Tribunal has further eroded the trust of the public through both questionable but un-appealable decisions and its outrageous overreach in a ruling that developers can apply directly to it to build outside of municipal boundaries.
Finally, much needed consultation on details related to the amalgamation of conservation authorities has disappeared behind closed doors, tainted by confidential funding to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, while legislative efforts to enable the privatization of municipal water and wastewater facilities are murky at best.
This cumulative abandonment of watershed protection, historic legal rights, and meaningful public consultation is putting the health of our watersheds at risk.
Inaugural List of Watersheds at Risk:
Caledon Abandons Sound Planning: In 2024 Caledon amended its official plan, moving away from an ecosystem approach to a landscape features approach to planning, which only protects isolated features and not ecological form and function. Shortly thereafter, Caledon approved in one fell swoop the pre-zoning of 5,000 acres of prime agricultural land to build 35,000 homes in the absence of a Growth Management Phasing Plan, comprehensive financial projections, and critical environmental studies.
“The Town of Caledon appears to have relinquished control of protecting our water, natural areas, and communities over to the development industry, which may now be calling the shots on how future communities are being designed and built, and throwing into question who is in charge of protecting our precious Credit and Humber watersheds”.
Debbe Crandall, President, Democracy Caledon, info@democracycaledon.org.
Carruthers Creek Headed for Trouble: A study by the local conservation authority found that the watershed had fallen below healthy levels of natural heritage, flood control, and nutrient pollution, and that new development without additional natural heritage, limits on impervious surfaces, and the retrofitting of current storm-water infrastructure would result in significant ecological deterioration and flooding. Finalizing development frameworks without addressing these issues disregards clear warnings.
“Pickering Council’s decision to approve the Northeast Pickering Secondary Plan (OPA 54) puts the cart entirely before the horse. Passing permanent land-use approvals without completed sub-watershed modeling or binding cost-sharing frameworks ignores clear warnings from conservation authorities and treats public oversight as an afterthought. We cannot build resilient communities by ignoring baseline environmental data and bypassing proper governance.”
Helen Brenner, Stop Sprawl Durham, StopSprawlDurham@gmail.com.
Georgian Bay Faces Widespread Disruption: Georgian Bay is experiencing accelerating stress from man‑made climate change and human‑introduced invasive species. Warmer waters and more intense rainfall events are overwhelming wastewater and storm-water systems that were designed for a very different climate, resulting in raw sewage discharges into tributaries and nearshore areas. Zebra and quagga mussels have stripped nutrients from the water column and locked them into dense mussel beds, leaving offshore waters nutrient‑starved even as quagga biomass accumulates on the bottom. This shift is disrupting the Bay’s food web, reducing the energy available to native species. Rising chloride levels from road salt and increasing micro-plastic contamination are entering the Bay’s food web, compounding ecological disruption across one of Ontario’s most important freshwater ecosystems.
“Ontario’s wastewater and storm-water systems weren’t poorly designed — but they were designed for a climate that no longer exists. Extreme rainfall events are now overwhelming infrastructure never built for this level of stress, and the result is raw sewage entering Georgian Bay. Without urgent provincial and municipal action, these cascading impacts will intensify”.
David Sweetnam, Executive Director, Georgian Bay Forever, david.sweetnam@gbf.org.
Simcoe County Needs Improved Groundwater Protection: While the provincial mean of ground-water sources of municipal water supply is 20 – 30%, almost 90% of Simcoe’s municipalities use ground-water, with 50% using it exclusively. Increases in population, municipal expansion, and development such as aggregate operations, as well as climate change, require increased attention to drinking water source protection, low water response plans, and greater protection of natural heritage and agriculture lands, perhaps by expanding the Greenbelt into Simcoe County.
“Simcoe County’s groundwater systems are the lifeblood for many of our communities. But with much of that water below ground and without adequate study, it is easy to rely on the idea that it will always be there – clean and plentiful – whenever we need it. Already communities are forced to limit development due to groundwater availability. We have a chance to properly steward our water for now and future generations. Supporting local leaders in upcoming municipal elections that pledge to do this is a good first step”.
Margaret Prophet, ED, Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition, margaret@simcoecountygreenbelt.ca.
Waterloo Region’s Permitting Drought: While the Walkerton crisis of falsified water quality reports led to seven deaths and more than 2,000 cases of severe illness, Waterloo Region managed to ignore reports of dwindling ground-water supplies until it had to suspend permitting and approvals for new construction due to a lack of drinking water supplies. The moratorium has recently been partially lifted, but with limited long-term vision to secure watershed security in an area with exploding population growth, such as by providing protected status to farmland as well as the Paris-Galt and Waterloo Moraines.
“Watershed security and ensuring reliable, abundant water supplies has never been more important – particularly after all the reduced economic activity we endured for over seven months this year. We need Greenbelt expansion, better farmland protection, and more careful management of our groundwater aquifers by the Region of Waterloo and provincial government.”
Kevin Thomason, Vice-Chair, Grand River Environmental Network, kevinthomason@mac.com.
Watersheds in South-central Ontario in Poor Condition: Of the watersheds in conservation authority report cards with grades, forest conditions are excellent or good in 268, fair in 172, and poor or very poor in 400, while surface water quality is excellent or good in 158 watersheds, fair in 202, and poor or very poor in 201. It is worth noting that that 66% and 71% respectively of the grades for the indicators above are fair, poor, or very poor; that 299 fewer watersheds get monitored for surface water quality than for forest conditions; and that surface water monitoring does not include chloride nor temperature. In addition, we note that there is no co-ordinated provincial action to address these issues.
“These conditions and the lack of action are unacceptable and will likely only get worse due to increased development under the Housing Action Plan and our changing climate. Yet the Ontario government keeps constraining instead of empowering conservation authorities and is discussing their amalgamation behind closed doors rather than inviting consultation on how to protect and improve our watersheds for current and future generations”.
Andrew McCammon, ED, Ontario Headwaters Institute, andrew@ontarioheadwaters.ca.
A word about First Nations: While we are deeply concerned about a broad range of issues being faced by First Nations, limited resources for the Network and the creation of the list above have not allowed us to reach out to include watersheds at risk for First Nations. We hope to be able to address this important aspect of our efforts in the future.
Over the next few months, the Ontario Watershed Guardian Network will be recruiting members, adding to the list of Watersheds at Risk, and developing recommendations to the province and its municipalities. More information can be found at https://ontarioheadwaters.ca/ontario-watershed-guardian-network/.
