Source Water Protection

Overview

Spurred mainly by the Walkerton Tragedy in May of 2000, where 2,500 residents of the town fell ill due to ingesting high levels of E.coli bacteria and 7 individuals died due to poor monitoring and maintenance of the drinking water system, the province (Scarfone, 2020) took major overhauling actions to ensure Ontarians drinking water was adequately protected.

Following an inquiry into the Walkerton event, Justice, O'Connor at the time made over 120 recommendations to better protect the province's drinking water, which have now been implemented and are the foundation of the province's drinking water protection framework. The first of these recommendations was that drinking water should be protected by developing watershed-based source water protection plans, which have been in place since 2006 with the adoption of the Clean Water Act (Government of Ontario, 2021)

Source Water Protection in Ontario

Since the Clean Water Act, 2006 was adopted within the province the original recommendations of the "Walkerton Inquiry" were able to begin to be implemented. The legislation required municipalities protect their drinking water sources and supplies through prevention by developing collaborative large-scale watershed-based source protection plans or source water protection (SWPP) based on monitoring results and the latest science. When the Clean Water Act was first established the province paid for the cost of developing the preliminary SWPPs.

Under the Clean Water Act the legislation describes newly developed source water protection areas and source water protection regions.

• Source Protection Region (SPR): Encompass one or more source protection areas (ex. Credit Valley-Toronto and Region-Central Lake or simply the CTC Region).
• Source Protection Area: Smaller geographic areas generally based on the watershed boundaries of Ontario's 36 Conservation Authorities

Under the Clean Water Act local multi-stakeholder source protection committees were developed for each region. Each committee is comprised on the region's leading researchers, professionals and technical personnel that help identify significant current and potential future threats to their local municipal drinking water sources. Their job is to regularly meet and develop preventative plans to address identified and theorized threats (Lake Erie Source Protection Region, 2022)

Site Considerations

Site considerations

The drainage area of a river.

An area of land that drains into a river or a lake. The boundary of a watershed is based on the elevation (natural contours) of a landscape.

Any person, agency or group who has a direct interest in the purpose of a proposed undertaking.

Initial capturing and removal of unwanted contaminants, such as debris, sediment, leaves and pollutants, from stormwater before reaching a best management practice; Examples include, settling forebays, vegetated filter strips and gravel diaphragms.

Refers to the conditions in which an organism lives and survives or the conditions in which an organism resides. These conditions can be described as aspects of a “physical”, “social” or an “economic” environment, depending on the perspective perceived by the observer.