Ontario’s Conservation…

Ontario’s Conservation Authorities (CAs) are watershed-based. They were designed to protect drinking water, reduce flood risk, conserve natural areas, and monitor watershed health. Enlarging the current 36 Municipally based Conservation Authorities into 7 and aligning these agencies with provincial priorities is both dangerous and unethical. Ontario covers a vast area of varying soil types, rock formations, wooded areas, watersheds, and communities. The placement of the existing Conservation Authorities was guided by the needs of each specific area, specifically for water shed management, and principally flood and erosion prevention. They continue in this role today.
The Grey Sauble Conservation Authority is integral in our community as a partner, an educator, and advisor. We rely on this body for careful and locally informed land management based on best practices for our local geology which in Grey County involves significant karst formations along the Niagara Escarpment which is a dominant feature of our landscape.
Bundling up the Conservation Authorities into fewer groups representing much larger regions defeats their purpose. Seated in specific watershed districts, they serve the population directly through locally informed expertise. Through our municipal councils, whose members sit on the Board, we are involved and engaged in working together for a future that will require local initiative in building safe and sustainable communities.
We ask that the 36 existing Conservation Authorities be supported in their mandates to monitor the watersheds they are responsible for. Anything less is reprehensible.