Backgrounder

For immediate release
June 1, 2007

NEW LEGISLATION PROVIDES STRONGER PROTECTION FOR GREAT LAKES AND ONTARIO’S WATER RESOURCES

The Ontario Legislature passed an act that will strengthen the management, protection and conservation of the Great Lakes Basin waters and all Ontario’s water resources. The Safeguarding and Sustaining Ontario’s Water Act implements the historic Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement, signed by Ontario, Quebec and the eight Great Lakes U.S. states on December 13, 2005. It also enables the province to start charging commercial and industrial users for the water they take and use.
Prior to passage, the McGuinty government amended the then proposed legislation to respond to stakeholder calls for even stronger protection. Some of the more significant amendments included:

• The agreement requires that transfers involving a consumptive use of 19 million litres per day or more be returned to the source Great Lake watershed. The legislation was amended to permit a regulation to be made requiring other transfers from one Great Lake watershed to another to return water to the source watershed.
• The province may require water users to prepare and implement water conservation plans.
• The environment minister is required to seek public comment on what actions the government should take in response to periodic, basin-wide assessments of cumulative impacts, including climate change, and to make a statement that summarizes the actions that the government intends to take in response to the assessment.  This goes beyond the commitments under the agreement related to assessing these impacts. Our changing climate has heightened the need for more precautionary and adaptive measures.

In addition to these measures, the Safeguarding and Sustaining Ontario’s Water Act:

• Elevates Ontario’s existing ban on transfers out of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin (known as inter-basin transfers) from a regulation to be part of the act. This ban on diversions also applies to the Nelson and Hudson Bay Basins.

• Ontario already prohibits the transfer of water out of its three major water basins, with rare exceptions, such as water in containers of 20 litres or less, and historical diversions.
• The act elevates the inter-basin transfer ban from a regulation to a law to emphasize the importance of the prohibition both for Ontarians and for the other Great Lakes jurisdictions.

• Bans new and increased transfers of water from one Great Lakes watershed to another, with strictly regulated exceptions (known as intra-basin transfers).

• The act prohibits the diversion of water for new or increased intra-basin transfers of 379,000 litres per day or greater from one Great Lake watershed to another Great Lake watershed, subject to strictly regulated exceptions.
• The act sets out the stringent criteria that must be met by applicants before these proposals will be approved.
• Stricter rules are in place for larger proposals, such as requiring that water be returned to the source Great Lake watershed after use, and requiring regional review by the ten Great Lakes jurisdictions.

• Permits Quebec and the eight Great Lakes states to seek to appeal to the Environmental Review Tribunal or seek judicial review of Ontario decisions on water withdrawals and transfers subject to the Agreement.  This section will not be brought into force until the other Great Lakes jurisdictions provide Ontario with the right to bring an application for judicial review in their courts.

• Creates authority to pass regulations to further support the implementation of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement, such as regulations that:

• Require measures to promote water conservation and water use efficiency.
• Introduce an environmental decision-making standard for the review of proposed water withdrawals and require prior notice and comment by other Great Lakes jurisdictions for large consumptive water uses.

• Prescribe additional criteria to respond to periodic assessments of cumulative impacts, including criteria relating to climate change or other significant threats to the Great Lakes Basin.

• Enables Ontario for the first time to charge for water taken or used for industrial or commercial purposes. 

• Charges are currently used in Canada and other parts of the world to fund water management activities, encourage conservation, and discourage waste.
• Consultation with commercial and industrial water users will lay the foundation for a regulation that will set these charges, beginning with highly consumptive users.
• The charge does not apply to private domestic wells or water used for domestic and other non-commercial uses on municipal supplies. Charges do not apply to institutions such as schools and care facilities, and environmental uses such as wetlands projects. The charge also does not apply to hydropower and agricultural uses.

• Enables Ontario to require water takings that began on or before March 29, 1961 to obtain a Permit To Take Water.
• Water takings that started before March 29, 1961, currently do not require a permit. The act enables a regulation requiring defined historical takings to obtain a permit. This authority will be phased in and subject to full consultation.

• Requires a Permit To Take Water for any water taking over 50,000 litres per day except:
• Watering of livestock if the water taking is less than 379,000 litres per day.
• Water taking for domestic purposes, other than by a municipality or by a company or public utility, if the taking is less than 379,000 litres per day or a lower amount that may be specified by the regulations.

• Clarifies and updates the types of conditions that can be imposed through Permits To Take Water. For example:

• Clarify the authority of the province to impose conditions in a permit such as requiring water conservation and water use efficiency measures.

- 30 -

 

Contact information for media:
For information on the Great Lakes agreement: Rob Messervey Ministry of Natural Resources 705-755-1278	For information on water regulatory charges: John Steele Ministry of the Environment 416-314-6666
Contact information for the general public: 416-325-4000 or 1-800-565-4923/ www.ene.gov.on.ca

 

Back to News Releases