Clean Water, Murky Politics

Unless you are very involved in local or provincial politics, you may have not been aware of the McGuinty government's latest response to the legacy that is Walkerton.

Justice Dennis O'Connor made a number of recommendations on how water should be regulated and protected, and the Ontario government, not wanting to appear as obstructionist, has gone ahead on a number of fronts.

People in Sydenham are well acquainted with the one scheme - a Regulation from the Ministry of the Environment that sought to impose exacting standards on tap water. Unfortunately for them, this could only be accomplished through the construction of a multi-million dollar treatment plant that is costing 270 households roughly $25,000 each to hook into, not to mention $40 a month in perpetuity. Most galling for them was the report of the province a couple of years later recommending that such measures not be imposed on communities of les than 10,000. The fact that the local MPP, Leona Dombrowsky, was the Minister who signed off on the Regulation adds more salt to the wound.

Now, the province has passed Bill 43 - the Clean Water Act, which creates new boards - "drinking water source protection committees" - who will oversee everything from water quality standards to who can access ground water in the first place.

Committees will be required to develop "protection plans" that include: policies intended to end existing threats to drinking water, and to prevent future activities from becoming threats to drinking water; a list of activities that are prohibited in certain locations within the protection area; a list of activities that are not permitted until a risk assessment has been submitted to the permit official, a risk management plan developed, and a permit issued; a list of locations where a person cannot make Planning Act applications, build, or change the use of a building without a permit; and guidelines for the issuance and renewal of permits.

Translation - the province is setting up local committees, neither answerable to Queen's Park or local municipalities, that can decide everything and anything related to ground water.

You get a building permit from your township, pay all of the fees and jump through all of the hoops. You have done everything according to the book. Unfortunately, some "committee" decides that you can't have a permit to drill a well. You want to appeal, of course, but who do you talk to?

The local township is not in charge, the Ministry of the Environment says that they are not in charge because the committee is 'arm's length', and it is not clear who you can talk to.

Even worse, what if the committee decides to go after existing wells? Where you find an existing well, you find an existing home, where people are likely making mortgage and property tax payments on. Can the committee take a perfectly habitable home and declare in uninhabitable, causing families to lose not only their homes, but the single biggest financial asset they possess?

I believe that protection of ground water is important, but so too is protection of property owners' rights, the right of citizens to redress, and the right of local governments to act on behalf of their constituents.

Creating committees not answerable to individuals or governments, who can act without explanation or justification, and can do so without being accountable to the public for their actions might clean the water, but it muddies people's lives and the democratic process.