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)

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.

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.