On behalf of the Board of…

On behalf of the Board of Directors and members of the Palmerston Lake Association in Frontenac County, I am writing to oppose the consolidation of 36 Regional Conservation Authorities into just seven – and more specifically to eastern Ontario, 13 conservation authorities becoming just two – and even more specifically, to the Mississippi Valley Conservation Authority being folded into a proposed St. Lawrence RCA encompassing 46 municipalities.

The St. Lawrence Seaway is an important shipping corridor that extends from Lake Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean. The environmental conditions along this route have little in common with those in the Mississippi and Carp river watersheds. Given the climate change consequences of increasingly frequent extreme weather events including flooding, drought, tornadoes, derechos and the like, local capacity for rapid and effective response to manage freshwater supply and quality is more important than ever. This is not the time to centralize services and diminish the voice of the municipalities that fund the conservation authority services we taxpayers rely upon.