As a retired project manager…

As a retired project manager of Source Water Protection for Ausable Bayfield Maitland Valley, I feel the scale of this consolidation of conservation authorities will be just too unwieldy for staffing, communication, collaboration and municipal/customer/landowner servicing.

Source Protection also combined conservation authority boundaries into 19 regions that were serviced with municipal water supplies. While Ausable Bayfield CA and Maitland Valley CA, were areas of very similar land use and population bases, not all regions were so lucky. I spent 17 years hearing of the many challenges from staff in those areas. They included hours long travel distances for site visits, more time spent on meeting with and responding to multiple municipalities than accomplishing legislated tasks and a multitude of land use diversity in the area that required a variety of expertise. Originally our conservation authority was to be paired with St. Clair CA, including "chemical valley", which has vastly different industries, land use and terrain than Ausable Bayfield and would have made our work much more complex.

Change is a necessary component of life, society and governance. Momentous change without forethought of how it will affect on-the-ground services, cost vs savings, loss of continuity and local knowledge, the ability for CAs to provide legislative requirements and the actual end benefits is irresponsible.

Based on my experience, If consolidation is destined to happen, then a closer look at a more reasonable realignment of conservation authority boundaries should be considered.