Municipal Monitor - May/June 2008 - (Page 17)

tion project. “The geography is in my project area but the largest number of recipients is in the London area, so it creates collaboration potential.” More Guidance Weir would also like to see more guidance on issues such as the Long Term Municipal Drinking Water Supply. What are the prohibitive activities going to be? What are the activities for which risk management plans are going to be required? Yet another big issue is around cluster systems. “This is all good work that we’re doing but the actual protection starts when we start to look at our protection zones and change or restrict land uses,” says Weir. “There is still a lot of information to come from the Ministry and municipalities are quite anxious about proceeding with the assessment work without a better understanding of possible land use impacts.” Keith Taylor is the source water protection project manager for the Quinte Region. “We have seven municipal intakes and four systems that are on wells,” says Taylor. “The first thing we worked on was developing a watershed characterization report which is a collection of all the known science and information about our watershed at this point in time.” Another module that Quinte is working on is the water budget. The actual water budget component is completed and the Tier One Water Budget, which looks at stresses on the water quantity, is in the works. “It’s been an interesting process,” says Taylor. “We found out that about 60 per cent of the water that comes into the watershed evaporates or transpires back out of the watershed. That was a bit of a surprise.” Quinte is also conducting studies on all the municipal intakes and municipal wells within its watershed in order to develop Intake Protection Zones and Well Head Protection Areas. The Region has its source protection committee in place and Taylor is pleased with the expertise and scope of the members. Taylor says Quinte is already notifying property owners close to municipal sources that they may be eligible for funding to clean up any problems threatening the source water supply. municipal MONITOR · 17 Ontario has almost 600 drinking water sources serving municipalities. The Ausable-Bayfield project has set up six working groups and a municipal subcommittee. The working groups include a knowledgeable mix of local citizens who provide insight, questions and ideas to the source protection committee. Every municipality has unique characteristics including one of the Ontario’s largest, the City of Ottawa. “Ottawa extends into three conservation authorities and two source planning authorities so one of the interesting aspects is the resulting three source protection plans,” says Dixon Weir, Director, Water and Wastewater Services. “It’s going to be extremely important for us to ensure that the look and feel of the final source protection plans are identical. We don’t want to be going to development and having unique rules being applied in certain geographical areas of the city and different rules in other areas. We’re trying to co-ordinate risk assessments so that the same methodology and weight are applied across all of Ottawa, because that rules what will ultimately be in the source protection plans.” The City of Ottawa relies on the Ottawa River as its primary water source for 750,000 residents. It is a water source that extends into the neighbouring province of Quebec. While the co-operation level is high, Weir says Ottawa needs the province at the table in these transborder discussions. Ian Smith says the province has initiated talks with Quebec and expects to set up another consultation, which will include the province, Ottawa and staff from the affected Conservation Authorities. CLEAR Crawhall has conducted a dozen training sessions on the Clean Water Act. She stresses to municipalities that there is less time than they think. If municipalities don’t get involved in the process, decisions will be made for them. Once a phase is completed, it will be very difficult to make changes. Unique Municipalities The Ausable-Bayfield source protection project has been focusing on source protection for a number of years already. For example, the Watershed Characterization is a broad environmental document that looks at everything from tree coverage to water quality. In addition, work has begun on technical studies. “In our case, Goderich and the City of London are leading the two Great Lake intake studies,” says Cathie Brown, project manager for the Ausable–Bayfield source protec- May/June 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Municipal Monitor - May/June 2008

Municipal Monitor - May/June 2008 Contents President's Message: On Messages and Milestones Viewpoint: Much Ado About Nothing? Again Mapping the North: Municipalities Team Up to Create Sophisticated Geographic Information System The Clean Water Act: Let's Make it Perfectly Clear Developing Trend: Communication is Essential During Large-Scale Projects Water Under the Bridge Municpal Memos Index to Advertisers

Municipal Monitor - May/June 2008

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