Ontario’s water world — in 1992 (D.N. Jeffs, 1982)

What will our waters be like ten years from now? That will depend very much on changes in our economic and social conditions and on people’s reactions to them.

Three conditions are particularly significant to the future of water management.

One is largely economic and results from the increasing use of coal to generate electricity in the United States. Burning coal discharges sulphur dioxides, sulphates, nitrous oxides and heavy metals to the air where they can be transported over long distances to be transformed into acid rain. Acid rain can lower the pH of lakes and streams and affect fish, aquatic organisms and wildlife. Improved control measures will be needed to reduce emissions to the atmosphere and protect sensitive land and water resources.

In contrast, in Ontario we find increasing use of nuclear power for electrical generation. Its main effects on water resources are physical damage to some aquatic life at water intakes and elevated temperatures of the discharged cooling waters. Increasing attention is being given to the design of intake and discharge facilities to protect fish habitats and reduce effects on aquatic life.

The second condition is both economic and social, and is also tied to the increasing cost of fuel . It is the likelihood that people will spend more of their recreation time closer to home. This may lead to demands for continuing improvements in the quality of water for recreational uses including swimming and fishing, especially close to urban areas where it is most difficult to achieve high level of water quality.

The third condition is largely social. It is the increasing public awareness and concern about trace contaminants which may be harmful to aquatic life or man. This awareness results in a growing demand to reduce and eliminate discharges of hazardous contaminants to the environment.

public awareness will lead to action

With widespread support for better water quality, we can look forward to improvements in waste-water treatment processes at industries to reduce the discharge of trace contaminants to the environment. Some of these improvements will be at plants with their own full treatment systems. Other plants will provide better pre-treatment of their wastes before discharging them to municipal sewage systems or to the yet to be established liquid industrial waste treatment facilities.

Contaminants such as pesticides, metals and airborne organic chemicals also reach watercourses from many diffuse sources including runoff from urban and rural areas. Such sources are hard to control. In many cases, improvements will arise from changes in emissions; for exam the switch to unleaded gas and restrictions on the use of some pesticides or chemicals such as [illegible] and PCBs. In others, public awareness that releasing waste oil and cleaning solvents to storm sewers pollutes our waterways will lead to actions to correct such practices.

Hand in hand with these changes will go requirements for analysis of a wide range of compounds in effluents, receiving waters, streams and lakes. This information will be produced by sophisticated laboratory equipment skilled scientists and technicians. Then it will be stored and processed in the Ministry of the Environment’s industrial monitoring information system and sample formation system.

Results of the monitoring programs are evaluated by other ministry scientists and engineers
published for use by the public and those who plan and manage water resources.

The ministry will continue program to provide to the public information on contaminants in sport fish as a guide to consumption and to the conditions of lakes and rivers. This information gives a broad understanding of contaminants and their significance and identifies changes their levels.

Turning to ground water, note an increase in recognition of the need to protect this valuable portion of our water resources. Ground water is the source of supply for most rural residents and many of our inland towns and cities. The quality of this water supply has been threatened in the past primarily by waste disposal sites. Today all waste disposal sites have been reviewed by the ministry and where conditions were unsatisfactory, sites have been closed or operating requirements changed.

Proposed new sites receive detailed reviews to ensure sound design and operation to protect the quality of ground water and surface water. The efforts of the Ontario Waste Management Corporation to build a modem plant for the treatment and disposal of liquid industrial wastes will remove a number of contaminants from the environment and provide still more protection for our water resources.

A good example of the progress possible once a problem has been recognized, the causes determined, and remedial actions accepted is the case of past nutrient enrichment and excessive algae growth in the Great Lakes.

On the recommendations of the International Joint Commission, agreements on Great Lakes water quality were signed between Canada and the United States and between Canada and Ontario calling for a reduction of phosphorous discharges from sewage treatment plants in the Great Lakes basin. Ontario municipalities with support from the federal government soon added chemical treatment to their sewage treatment plants to achieve the objective of one milligram of phosphorus per liter in their effluent. Together with reductions of phosphorus in household detergents, this action has markedly decreased the discharge of phosphorus to the Great Lakes and has reduced the amount of algae at many locations along the lakes shorelines.

phosphorus reduction shows good results

As as consequence, treatment of drinking water at several municipal plants, where algae were previously a problem, became easier and beaches became more enjoyable.

Extensive studies were also conducted on pollution from runoff from agriculture, forestry, industrial and urban land areas. Reports published by the IJC and jointly by Environment Canada and Environment Ontario deal with means of reducing pollution from these diffuse sources.

land use planning will also protect water

Planning decisions on land use and design requirements can aid in protecting water quality and maintaining adequate ground water supplies. The ministry’s water quality and streamflow networks, its water-well record system, and its basin inventory and management studies provide the information needed for sound planning and management decisions. The mutual interest among farm groups, conservation authorities and government agencies will lead to increased efforts to control erosion in the ’80s. Such control will provide benefits from better soil tilth, the protection of fish habitats and less loss of nutrients from farmlands to streams and lakes.

In 1978, a revised Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between Canada and the United States placed more emphasis on the need to deal comprehensively with hazardous contaminants and to reduce inputs to the Great Lakes. This will allow us to look forward to further important improvements in water quality in the next ten years. As in the past ten years, improvements will be achieved by mutual action and will be broad in scope.

improvements depend on co-operation

Many of the improvements we expect are continuations of changes commenced in the ’70s. They include further reductions in levels of nutrients and hazardous contaminants, and better water quality for recreation near urban areas.

Improvements related to acid rain will take longer. They may only begin to be effective toward the end of the decade. Action must be taken in both the United States and Canada to reduce emissions of sulphur and nitrogen oxides to the atmosphere.

Major reductions are needed to protect sensitive lakes and drainage basins in both countries.
Negotiations will be hard. Industries and power generating stations face large equipment and operating costs to reduce emissions, and abatement at source will only be achieved over a period of years. Then, the effects of high acid levels in our lakes and streams, particularly during the spring runoff period, will start to ease.

Acid rain and hazardous contaminants each pose highly complex problems. To understand them and bring effective control measures into play places high demands on scientists, engineers and managers of governments, industries, universities and consultants.

Gathering information on source, pathways, reactions and effects, they will have to reach conclusions and recommendations for control of different contaminants based on their scientific and engineering knowledge and expertise. All need the support and advice of a well-informed public.

The answers to environmental concerns will not be easy, but the ministry will provide information, expertise and dedication to ensure continuing improvements in water quality in the 1980s.