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Notes for remarks

by

The Honourable Laurel Broten
Minister of the Environment

2005 Grand River Watershed Water Forum (Cambridge)
“Ontario’s Clean Water Legacy”

GRCA Administration Centre
Cambridge, ON
Friday, September 16, 2005

(Check Against Delivery)

Thank you for that kind introduction.

And a special thanks to Peter Krause, Chairman of the Grand River Conservation Authority and Chair of Conservation Ontario, who did some expert juggling to accommodate my schedule, allowing me to join the roster today.

It is a great pleasure to be here this morning.

In the course of the day, you’ll hear from many impressive speakers, no doubt. Among them will be my colleague Maria Van Bommel, the Parliamentary Assistant to Agriculture Minister Leona Dombrowsky who, as you know, happens to be my predecessor in Environment.

Distinguished guests, I am very pleased to have this opportunity to address you in my new role as Minister of the Environment.

I think we’d all agree that here in Ontario, we have a special relationship with water. It has sustained our communities for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Whether for commerce, agriculture or recreation, Ontario is all about water, really. And perhaps simply because we have so much of it, it has become our legacy -- ours to protect in the truest sense.

Today I’m going to talk to you about those values that I think we all share – a responsibility to protect that legacy. Clean, healthy water from source to tap – that is what we want in Ontario. That is what we know to be so vitally important for a healthy future. And that is what Ontarians deserve – nothing less.

I’d also like to talk to you about your role in all of this. Our plan depends on strong local support, and strong leadership from conservation authorities and municipalities.

And finally also about the role that science plays in guiding us.

But first, I’ll start by explaining why we believe this is necessary.

We all know too well the effects of contaminated water. In May 2000, the Town of Walkerton’s water source was contaminated, resulting in seven deaths. Thousands of others became ill. Above and beyond the very personal pain, the estimated financial cost to the community and the province was over $60 million.

And sadly, Walkerton has not proven to be an isolated incident. In 2000, the Township of Beckwith suffered a similar fate as a result of a contaminated landfill site. The final bill? As much as $4.5 million.

Closer to home, last year industrial solvent was found in drinking water serving Kitchener. The cost of bringing the wellfield back into service is estimated at $3 million.

Three different situations, three different sources of contamination - an indication of what happens when there is no comprehensive groundwater protection program in place.

That is why Justice O’Connor put so much emphasis on the importance of protecting our sources of water from risks that can and must be prevented.

Without clean, safe drinking water, nothing else matters. If you can’t drink your water, your way of life is greatly compromised, and your community cannot grow and thrive.

Sans eau potable fiable, rien d’autre ne compte. Si l’on n’a pas d’eau propre à boire, notre mode de vie est gravement compromis, et notre collectivité ne peut se développer ou prendre de l’essor.

This is something that the Grand River Conservation Authority and its partners, including local municipalities, clearly understand.

Your excellent working relationship with farmers attests to that. Improving water quality by sharing the costs of bringing in best management practices is a key collaborative effort.

Commissioner O’Connor – who will bring his many valuable insights on this subject to the Water Forum later today – saw the critical need for a multi-barrier network of protections. Our government is moving forward to meet his recommendations.

The McGuinty government is committed to protecting our environment and our health. Safe water is part of the foundation of that promise.

In the past two years:

• We hired additional water inspectors.
• We introduced new rules for the amount of training required to operate a municipal water system.
• We inspect all municipal water systems annually as well as the labs that test drinking water twice a year.
• We have stricter rules for issuing permits to take water.
• In the spring, we introduced environmental penalties and a community cleanup fund to guard against industrial spills affecting drinking water

We have taken these actions because protecting our health and our environment top our priority list. And that’s not all.

We are now undertaking our largest commitment yet to keep our water safe and this fall, we’ll introduce legislation to make it law.

Logically, it works better to protect water from becoming contaminated in the first place, rather than trying to treat it after the fact.

The preventive approach won’t work without the involvement of the entire community. A single watershed can support many towns, each with its own decision-makers, not to mention hundreds of businesses or farms.

If all of these stakeholders are making decisions in isolation, it isn’t very likely that we would end up with a workable solution.

We need to treat the entire watershed as a single community and make shared decisions on managing our water.

No surprise then that our plan to protect drinking water at its source depends so heavily on local support and collaboration.

We want to engage municipalities, conservation authorities, water user and landowners at the local level to work collaboratively across each watershed to prepare plans to identify and deal with threats to drinking water.
In many cases, this will be a voluntary approach, based on consensus-building and negotiation. Only in cases where a significant threat to a source of drinking water is identified will mandatory action be required.

But even in these circumstances, we want landowners, farmers, businesses, municipalities and CAs to work cooperatively to find the most cost-effective, practical approach to dealing with these risks.

Why is it so important to have local, community-wide plans for water protection?

The answer – all water is local water. Ontario is blessed with an abundant supply of it, but it isn’t one big body of water that we can all draw from equally.

We all depend on our local watershed. If our community’s water is mismanaged, we will suffer locally. No one else can fix it for us.

Decisions about managing our water belong in the hands of the people who will be most affected – people who are trying to protect their children and their families and provide them with a better quality of life. The province’s legislation will do just that.
Communities will have a voice in decisions that will affect their water and their health. We are providing the framework and guidance to create local opportunities to achieve local benefits. Of course, these benefits will often carry over to municipalities across watersheds and in other parts of Ontario.

We will ask communities to look at the local risks to water quality and create a customized plan to address them. No two watersheds are the same and we cannot expect that a cookie-cutter approach will do the job of protecting them.

Ultimately, we are building on a shared sense of responsibility for water – a sense of stewardship. And among rural residents of this great province, I know that that is a concept that is already strongly felt.

And I can promise you that sound, solid science is at the heart of this plan.

Each watershed plan will be based on a thorough, scientific assessment of potential threats to drinking water. These assessments will identify which of these threats are significant enough to warrant mandatory action.

This in turn will give us the confidence we need to know that we are acting on real, not perceived, threats to our drinking water.

“Big picture” thinking about water is long overdue in Ontario, and when this government introduces source protection legislation this fall, we’ll be setting a new standard.

This new law will mean Ontario will have some of the best-protected water in North America.

Municipalities and local conservation authorities, informed by the input of local stakeholders and the public, will make important decisions about local water supplies.

This means that if the public wants to get involved, they can. It’s that simple.

Ontarians have many practical, pragmatic “quality of life” decisions to make in the course of any given day. And increasingly, these decisions have environmental implications. We all need to be engaged in protecting our water sources, our environment and, in turn, the health of our families.

The McGuinty government has introduced a number of initiatives to help protect our province’s natural resources and prosperity for future generations.

Source water protection is only one of our commitments to protect our health and our environment. It all fits together with other efforts, such as the Places to Grow Act, the Greenbelt and the Oak Ridges Moraine Act.

For instance, we are dealing with water protection and nutrient management at the same time, to make rules for farmers clear and workable. Agriculture is an important and historic sector in Ontario. We all know that farmers have long been stewards of our land and water.

The end result will be that no matter where you live in Ontario, whether your water comes from a deep well, a small river or the Great Lakes, you can have the confidence that your water is clean.

Our quality of life is our greatest shared value, and it is made up of many elements, but none as precious as a drinking water supply that is clean, safe and sustainable.

Mark Twain once said, “whiskey’s for drinking – water’s for fighting over.” It’s a great line, but with all due respect, water is for drinking and it’s worth fighting for. And that spirit for the fight has to be there in every one of us.

Our government has this spirit and it informs everything we do. I have just outlined some of the ways we are fighting for our water.

We are fighting for our air with initiatives like Ontario’s coal replacement plan and the five-point plan for cleaner air.

And we are fighting for our land resources with more effective waste reduction and diversion programs.

If we value our health, our safety, and preserving our community for the next generation, then our legacy starts with our commitment to drinking water we can trust.

Si nous valorisons notre santé, notre sécurité, et que nous voulons préserver notre collectivité pour la prochaine génération, nous devons nous engager à protéger l’eau potable.

I am confident that we can and will succeed because this commitment is shared with partners like the Grand River Conservation Authority and everyone who has gathered here at the Grand River Watershed Water Forum.

Thank you.

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