The Council of Tay Valley…

The Council of Tay Valley Township is commenting on ERO 013-5018 to express concern with its potential to undermine good land use planning and to download costs to municipalities and applicants for services formerly funded by the province.

The proposed changes intend to “clearly define the core mandatory programs and services
provided by conservation authorities to be:
 natural hazard protection and management,
 conservation and management of Conservation Authority lands,
 drinking water source protection, and
 protection of the Lake Simcoe watershed.”

Conservation Authorities were created in 1946 on a watershed basis to address concerns
about degradation of water quality in Ontario. Poor land, water & forestry practices in the
1930s and 1940s led to extensive drought, soil loss, deforestation & exacerbated flooding.
Following the devastating floods of Hurricane Hazel in 1954, controlling the flow of water for
flood management and pollution control was added to their responsibilities.

Protection of persons and property from natural hazards is currently a core mandate of the
Conservation Authorities. Continuation of this function is welcomed by the Township as this
information is needed to protect its residents and their property from harm. In addition, the
information is required in order for the Township’s Planning Act decisions to conform to the
Provincial Policy Statement Section 3 “Protecting Public Health and Safety - Natural
Hazards”.

In fact, the Township would welcome more provincial funding provided to this function as
there are areas of the Township that have flood elevations defined by the Rideau Valley
Conservation Authority (RVCA), but due to lack of funding have not been mapped and are
therefore not transparent to the Planner, landowners, and potential purchasers through the
Township GIS system. The Mississippi Valley Conservation Authority (MVCA) has not had
the resources to identify flood elevations in the Township; therefore there are no maps to
inform residents of flood risks.

Similarly, the Township welcomes continuation of the Conservation Authority function of
drinking water source protection. Again, while good first steps have been achieved through
the Mississippi Rideau Source Water Protection Plan, rural areas have been underserved to
date and this gap was to be addressed by Conservation Authorities starting this year.
Specifically, there are little to no protections designated for Highly Vulnerable Groundwater
sources of drinking water in Tay Valley Township, i.e., all the private wells in Tay Valley (with
the exception of those in the Balderson area). What is unclear now is whether the province
believes this aspect of source water protection work is necessary.

The Township urges the province to follow through on providing a commensurate level of
effort to protect rural drinking water as has been expended to protect urban drinking water.

The Township has serious concerns about the apparent proposed restrictions on
Conservation Authorities’ mandates related to conservation and management of lands
outside of those owned by Conservation Authorities. The Township relies on information
provided by the RVCA and MVCA for Planning Act applications with respect to storm water
management, subdivision hydrogeological reviews, shoreline disturbance, etc.

If the implication is that the province will not provide funding for these newly defined “nonmandatory services”, then the municipality will be required to pay the Conservation
Authorities more or use private sector consultants. The higher cost of these services will be
passed onto applicants, disadvantaging individual residents compared to larger corporations.

Finally, on the topic of core functions of the Conservation Authorities, the Township is
concerned that by singling out protection of the Lake Simcoe watershed, other watershed
planning by Conservation Authorities is to be considered non-mandatory. This direction would
seem to contradict the Provincial Policy Statement requirement that, “Planning authorities
shall protect, improve or restore the quality and quantity of water by using the watershed as
the ecologically meaningful scale for integrated and long term planning”.

Because water flows downstream, floodplains can only be managed by having an
understanding of development upstream in the watershed so proposals that may impact
water runoff can be mitigated to prevent an increase in floodplain size. Similarly a watershed
approach is needed to ensure water supply is met in times of drought by protecting
groundwater recharge areas.

Flooding is also managed by maintaining enough healthy natural resources in watersheds to
absorb heavier rains and snow-melts that are now more frequent and severe, and forecast to
worsen with climate change. Currently RVCA and MVCA provide valuable data to planners
on this and other parameters of watersheds through their sub-watershed reports. If these are
no longer part of their core mandate this would create a significant data gap for planners and
others.

Lake Simcoe is a badly degraded watershed. The Township is concerned that planning to
prevent degradation may be set aside in favour of crisis management which is more difficult
and costly than preventative planning. Tay Valley Township’s 36 lakes and 8 rivers in its
watersheds need the continued protection and management provided by the RVCA and
MVCA before they degrade as badly as the Lake Simcoe watershed has.

The Township has less immediate concerns about the proclamation of the un-proclaimed
sections of the Conservation Authorities Act related to fees, municipal levy and enforcement -
as long as there is no further downloading of costs to municipalities. There is already a
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in place with Lanark County for these services with
the Conservation Authorities.

The Township is concerned that the proposed changes are coming so soon with little public
consultation given that the province spent two years holding extensive public consultations
before introducing the recent changes to the Conservation Act in 2017 through the Building
Better Communities and Conserving Watersheds Act.