Sludge Watch ==> Ontario Waterkeepers - Compromising the Great Lakes

[Maureen Reilly]

Ontario: Are we compromising our Great Lakes waters commitment?

The public comment period on Ontario's proposed amendments to the Ontario 
Water Resources Act ends today. The amendments are supposed to make law 
Ontario's promise to protect Great Lakes waters in this province. They come 
on the heels of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water 
Resources Agreement ("Agreement") signed by Ontario and the eight Great 
Lakes States in 2005. The Agreement sets out who gets to take water out of 
the Great Lakes, when, for what purpose, and under what conditions.

The Agreement prohibits taking water out of the Great Lakes Basin for use in 
other regions (with a few exceptions). It also prohibits taking water from 
one Great Lake for use in another Great Lake ("Intra-Basin transfers"), 
unless the water is eventually returned.

Ontario's proposed rules contain one surprise: they allow the diversion of 
water from one Great Lake to another Great Lake. This kind of large-scale 
diversion is exactly what the Agreement was originally intended to prevent. 
While the final Agreement was the product of significant compromise between 
the nine parties, Ontario had the freedom to create domestic rules as 
protective as it desired.

Instead, the Province of Ontario is choosing rules that are riddled with 
loopholes, undefined terms, and exceptions to the prohibition on water 
diversions - exactly the kind of concession that environmentalists and 
scientists most feared.

During the negotiation process, Waterkeeper expressed concerns that Ontario 
could become the biggest proponent of Intra-Basin transfers on the Great 
Lakes: four of the Great Lakes are within the province's jurisdiction, and 
demand for new drinking water sources is growing as groundwater supplies are 
shrinking and/or becoming contaminated.

Of all the parties to the Agreement, Ontario has the fewest incentives to 
conserve municipal water supplies or to protect drinking water quality. 
There's always another Great Lake. We can always build a bigger pipe.

For these reasons, Waterkeeper recommended that the province show good faith 
and ban Intra-Basin diversions. Instead, after signing the Agreements with 
the eight Great Lakes states, the province is quietly ushering in a set of 
provincial rules that may be less protective than its original commitments. 
And because of our geography and our political reach, Ontario may emerge as 
one of the greatest threats to Great Lakes water.

This is not the way for Ontario to fulfill its commitments to the eight 
Great Lakes States ... or to our own communities.

See our comment on our web site:

http://www.waterkeeper.ca/content/fish/ontario_to_allow_water_transfe.php