Roger Varley has been in the news business almost 40 years with The Canadian Press/Broadcast News, Uxbnridge Times-Journal, Richmond Hill Liberal and Uxbridge Cosmos. Co-winner with two others of CCNA national feature writing award. In Scout movement over 30 years, almost 25 as a leader. Took Uxbridge youths to World Jamboree in Holland. Involved in community theatre for 20 years as actor, director, playwright, stage manager etc. Born in England, came to Canada at 16, lived most of life north and east of Toronto with a five-year period in B.C.
Water, water everywhere
It should go without saying that nobody wants to see a recurrence of the Walkerton drinking water tragedy. It should also be a given that everyone wants Uxbridge Township's water supply to be as pure and contaminant free as possible, and that we should make every effort to ensure it remains so.
But in the process of protecting our water, we seem to be building layer upon layer of bureaucratic entities, most, if not all, consisting of unelected officials who appear to have the power to tell our elected representatives what they will do and won't do in the name of conservation.
Uxbridge Council this week received a missive from the CTC (Credit Valley, Toronto and Region and Central Lake Ontario) Drinking Water Source Protection Region and another from the South Georgian Bay Lake Simcoe Source Protection Region regarding development of plans to protect drinking water sources and the need for municipalities to form their own source protection committees.
We already have the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority heavily involved in town affairs when it comes to planning and development. As an example, council heard an application this week from a resident wishing to build a detached garage in the heart of the downtown area. The resident will, according to the file, require a permit from the LSRCA. Why the LSRCA should have any say in whether a resident can build a garage is beyond me. But LSRCA also is putting pressure on Uxbridge to reduce the amount of phosphates being released from the water treatment plant, even though the amount is about as small as our engineers can get it. LSRCA says they want to protect Lake Simcoe, but, as Mayor Gerri Lynn O'Connor has pointed out several times, large municipalities on the west side of the lake produce far more phosphates than Uxbridge.
As a by-the-by, the CTC Source Protection Committee is headed up by former Uxbridge councillor Susan Self, who also has a long association with the LSRCA. But back to the source water protection people.
In typical bureaucratic fashion, they say they are working on plans for water protection and they will include policies for dealing with activities defined as moderate or low threats and identify areas which might be vulnerable to either contamination or depletion. Now we get into the bureaucratic language:
“As source protection committees develop policies to protect municipal sources of drinking water, they are expected to use 'prescribed provincial instruments' as the policy approach of first choice. That means that, rather than creating a new regulation, the source protection plan would simply point to an already existing regulation that is protective of drinking water.”
The paper goes on to list what some of those prescribed provincial instruments are: the Aggregate Resources Act, the Environmental Protection Act, the Nutrient Management Act, the Ontario Water Resources Act, the Pesticides Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
In other words, there are six provincial acts already aimed at protecting our water. Presumably, if our municipal or regional governments detect any activity which could be construed as a threat to the aquifer, any or all of these pieces of legislation could be used to bring such activity to a halt.
So why do we need these unelected, quasi-legislative bodies like the CTC and SGBLS and LSRCA, all funded by taxpayers' dollars, stepping in and telling our elected bodies what they will do?
There's a sign our elected representatives are starting to bridle. Mayor O'Connor, a long-time champion of conservation, said this was “a prime example of the province passing responsibility down to the municipalities”. Councillor Pat Mikuse offered that “they're just making up rules as they go along, based on who knows what?”
For those who argue that, in the wake of Walkerton, we need to have all these bodies in the mix to make sure regulations are in place, I would respond that the Walkerton tragedy occurred not due to lax regulations but mainly because of the incompetence of those officials entrusted with protecting Walkerton's water supply.
If someone passes a municipal, provincial or federal law that I don't like, I have the opportunity to register my disagreement next time I cast a ballot. But it seems to me there are far too many of these unelected, unaccountable bodies piling on regulations and rules in which the average citizen has no say, no vote.
Tell me, am I wrong?
