The Moraine’s water: protected or neglected?

The Oak Ridges Moraine is a landform unique to southern Ontario. One of the province’s largest Moraines, it is highly valued as wild habitat for many plants and animals, as a source of recreation for the community and for the integral role it plays in storing and purifying drinking water. The Moraine’s importance was legally recognized by moraine-specific legislation in 2001 followed by the release of the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan in 2002. This legislation was intended to designate and protect the ecological and hydrological integrity of the Moraine.

The Oak Ridges Moraine is celebrated for its role in providing a vital source of clean drinking water in Southern Ontario. The law that was enacted to protect it places“hydrological integrity” as its guiding principle, but the story unfolding on the ground paints a diffrent picture. Activities taking place on the Moraine since the legislation passed continue to threaten the health and sustainability of its water.

In Ontario, Permits To Take Water are required for large-scale water removal from our lakes, ponds, streams and rivers. This permit system was devised to ensure the conservation, protection and wise management of water in a given area, so that water removal would not negatively affect existing citizens and the environment. Despite these aims, the process is flawed by a lack of co-ordination with other water management initiatives found in other provincial policies. A critical element to the Permit to Take Water states that the other relevant requirements beyond those explicitly set out in the specific permit, and surrounding operations in the vicinity that are removing large quantities of groundwater need to be considered. Today, in Ontario these requirements are not being met with the diligence that is necessary to ensure the Moraine’s water resources are sufficiently preserved and protected. In other words, what is happening on the ground is at odds with the spirit of the legislation, and the legal framework. Also, in the vast majority of cases, what we are seeing is that the Ministry of the Environment is not looking at the cumulative impacts of water takings. They are only looking at the cumulative impacts when there is a problem (for example declining groundwater levels). We need the provincial government to become more proactive, and display greater accountability and transparency in how groundwater is managed.

There are also situations on the Moraine where developers off the Moraine have tried to access the underground water or ‘aquifers’ on the Moraine. There is a major gap in the Moraine’s legal protection that allows developers to pipe “protected” Moraine water to new developments off the Moraine. The prediction that water will be the new oil for this century is beginning to ring true, even here in Ontario where we have access to a large percentage of the world’s freshwater. Protecting the Moraine and its invaluable water resources is vital to a sustainable future for Southern Ontario.

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