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Notes for remarks

by

The Honourable Laurel Broten
Minister of the Environment

Funding Announcement —
Quinte Conservation Authority

Belleville, ON
Friday, April 28, 2006

(Check against delivery)

Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for coming out.

I’m very pleased to be here with Robert Sager and all of our honoured guests.

As Minister of the Environment, I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to people who share my passion for a clean and healthy environment.

I want to thank you for your commitment to protecting drinking water and the health of people here in Belleville and across the Quinte Region.

It’s a commitment our government shares.

Our partners at the Quinte Conservation Authority also show they clearly understand that protecting the sources of our drinking water means working together with the entire community.

I’m here in Belleville today to talk about clean water — how to keep it safe and how to make sure it is managed responsibly.

In this province, there’s no question — we are blessed with an abundance of water.

We have more than a quarter of a million lakes, rivers and streams and we share the vast reservoir of the Great Lakes Basin. We also have a supply of groundwater in aquifers that is even greater than all of our surface water.

Our government is passionate about ensuring people have water that’s protected and plentiful. That’s why we’ve introduced legislation that we think was long overdue — our own Clean Water Act. This ground-breaking piece of legislation sets prevention — above all else — as its fundamental principle.

Notre gouvernement veut absolument que l’Ontario dispose d’une eau propre et abondante. C’est pourquoi nous avons instauré une loi qui aurait dû, à notre avis, être instaurée depuis longtemps — la Loi sur l’eau saine. Cette loi novatrice met l’accent sur la prévention de la contamination de l’eau et en fait le principe fondamental de protection de l’eau — plus important que tout autre.

We think that it is smarter, safer and more effective to protect water from contamination than to clean up problems after the fact.

Despite the abundance of water we have in Ontario, we are not immune to the consequences of contaminated drinking water. Events in Walkerton, Kitchener and Beckwith have shown that it can happen here. And they’ve shown us what’s at stake — our economic strength, our health and, in the most extreme cases, our lives.

Only constant vigilance will enable us to meet our responsibility to make sure no other community has to go through what people in these communities have experienced.

Walkerton’s legacy is a rethinking of the way drinking water is protected in Ontario. It has led to real progress as we’ve moved ahead on our commitment to fulfilling the recommendations of Justice O’Connor.

Over the last two years, our government has also hired more water inspectors, and introduced new rules for training the people who operate municipal water treatment systems.

We have implemented yearly inspections for municipal residential drinking water systems across the province and twice-yearly inspections at the labs that test our drinking water.

Our government is providing financial assistance to help communities upgrade their water and sewage systems, to help reduce the risk of contaminated drinking water. This is critical because more than half of Ontario’s pipes are more than fifty years old; many of them are over a hundred.

Many ‘boil water advisories’ get issued as a precautionary measure when there is a mechanical breakdown in the infrastructure. One broken pipe can cause anxiety and disruption in hundreds of households.

Continued investment in infrastructure will lower the risk of these sorts of disruptions and help us reduce the risks of contaminated drinking water.

The Clean Water Act complements these initiatives.

Belleville is a community where we can clearly see the potential benefits of a Clean Water Act.

Belleville and a host of other communities depend on the Bay of Quinte for drinking water.

The Bay of Quinte faces unique challenges. Here you’ve got a wide array of industries and other types of facilities located along the shoreline and on the interconnecting waters, including the Great Lakes.

The Clean Water Act would help communities look at the cumulative effect of all sources of pollution on the local watershed. That way, decisions about watershed protection won’t be made in isolation.

We’re already seeing great water protection work being done here — like the efforts to ensure that contaminated sediments in the mouth of the Trent River do not threaten public health and the water environment.

If passed, the Clean Water Act would build on this kind of work.

The act is based on prevention and reflects our government’s most fundamental beliefs about drinking water and the best ways to protect it.

For example, the act is locally-driven because we believe that local authorities are in the best position to determine what protection measures are needed, how best to carry them out, and who should lead those efforts.

The Clean Water Act is designed to encourage participation by local stakeholders in decisions affecting their water. Everyone in a community needs the opportunity to have a say in the common task of protecting local water sources.

Communities will look at both existing and potential threats to their water quality, and be able to take action to reduce or eliminate them.

That authority would extend to threats from outside your municipal boundaries.

We recognized early on that if you want to be effective in preventing problems with your drinking water, you need to base your work on sound science.

Communities need an accurate picture of their water supply, how it replenishes itself and what threatens it.

Right now in Ontario, conservation authorities and municipalities are using leading-edge research and technology to build the most comprehensive maps ever of our surface and groundwater supply.

This is part of our government’s 67-million dollar commitment to the science of drinking water protection.

Earlier this month, I’m pleased to tell you, our government provided the Quinte Conservation Authority with a total of 109,000 dollars for scientific studies. In fact, we have now provided more than one and a quarter million dollars over the past two years to the Quinte Conservation Authority and its partners to support watershed planning.

The most recent funding includes:

• $60,500 dollars for groundwater studies, and
• $48,500 for Great Lakes studies.

Those studies will provide a better understanding of this area’s water sources.

And that will work out well for the people of Belleville and the Quinte Region.

Now, the Quinte Conservation Authority will be better able to protect local drinking water.

We all share in the responsibility to ensure that our water supports good health, a vibrant quality of life and strong communities, like this one.

Our government is fortunate to have partners like the Quinte Conservation Authority who share this responsibility and share our commitment.

We owe it to each other — more importantly we owe it to future generations — to our children and their children.

I look forward to continuing to work with you towards our shared goal: healthy, clean, life-sustaining water.

Thank you.

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