Missed Opportunities under the Water Opportunities Act, 2010
In November 2010, the Ontario government passed the Water Opportunities and Water Conservation Act, 2010 (WOWCA). The WOWCA created a new stand-alone act – the Water Opportunities Act, 2010 (WOA) – as well as amended four other provincial acts (see Section 4.7 of the Supplement to this Annual Report for more on those amendments). The legislation was introduced in the spring 2010 budget, as part of the province’s Open Ontario Plan, to help foster the growth of an Ontario-based industry in water and wastewater technologies and services. As the primary means of achieving this goal, the WOA establishes a new non-Crown corporation – the Water Technology Acceleration Project (WaterTAP) – that will support the water and wastewater sectors in developing technologies, expanding markets and sharing ideas.
Water Conservation
While the primary motivation for introducing the legislation was economic and job growth, a secondary, but important, objective of the legislation is promoting water conservation. Canadians, including Ontarians, are among the biggest consumers of water in the world. Canadians use, per capita, approximately 4,000 litres of water per day. The majority of this water usage is for industrial purposes (mostly energy production). However, for household water use alone, the average Ontarian consumes approximately 270 litres of water per day, roughly twice as much as the average European.
Figure 5.4.1. Water Use in Canada by sector. Sources: Data from various sources.
Because Ontario’s fresh water reserves are so abundant, many Ontarians put little value on conserving water. Yet, our excessive water use carries substantial economic and environmental costs. For example, treated tap water is an expensively manufactured product – requiring large amounts of electricity to pump, treat, distribute and heat. Water treatment can account for up to half of a municipality’s total energy consumption, while residential water heating can account for 20 per cent of the average household’s energy consumption. Similarly, treatment of post-consumption wastewater requires further significant costs and energy use. Water conservation can, therefore, help reduce energy consumption and, in turn, greenhouse gas emissions.
Water conservation can also reduce pressures on local drinking water and sewage treatment infrastructure. For municipalities experiencing population growth and industrial development, conservation measures can extend the life of existing infrastructure and defer or even avoid the need for costly expansions and upgrades.
Water conservation is also critical to maintaining functioning watersheds. Water withdrawals disrupt hydrological systems (e.g., reduce water levels, alter stream flows, deplete aquifers, alter aquatic habitat, etc.). Furthermore, contaminated (or otherwise degraded) wastewater returning to the watershed can impair the quality of the receiving waters.
To help address these concerns, the WOA establishes several measures to encourage government (both provincial and municipal) to lead by example in embracing water conservation.
The WOA enables the Minister of the Environment to establish provincial “aspirational targets” for water conservation. The use of the term “aspirational,” however, indicates that, even if such targets are established, there will be no ramifications if the province fails to meet the targets. Similarly, the WOA authorizes Cabinet to establish water conservation targets for prescribed “public agencies” – defined as prescribed provincial ministries or other public entities, including municipalities. Like the province-wide targets, these provisions are merely permissive, and there is no indication of how or when these targets might be set. The Ministry of the Environment (MOE) is required to report on the province’s and public agencies’ activities and achievements in meeting any of these targets.
Cabinet is also authorized to require prescribed public agencies to prepare “water conservation plans,” which must include:
- a summary of annual water use for each of the agency’s prescribed operations;
- a description of current and proposed activities to conserve water, and a forecast of the expected results from these conservation measures; and
- a summary of the agency’s progress in conserving water, including progress in achieving any self-identified or regulated water conservation targets.
Cabinet may also require prescribed agencies to include water conservation and water protection as evaluation criteria in all procurement and capital investment decisions.
Sustainability of Municipal Infrastructure
To encourage municipalities to plan for and improve the sustainability of their water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure, the WOA enables Cabinet to make regulations that would require all prescribed “municipal service providers” to prepare “municipal water sustainability plans” for their municipal drinking water, wastewater and stormwater services. The specifics of the plan requirements – including which providers would be regulated, the timelines for compliance, the plan contents, and details of plan implementation – would be set out in regulation. However, the WOA does state that the plan may include: an asset management plan for the physical infrastructure; a financial plan; a water conservation plan for municipal water services; a risk assessment (including risks posed by climate change); and strategies for maintaining and improving the municipal services.
Improving the sustainability of water, wastewater and stormwater systems is important, as municipalities are known to chronically under-invest in their water and wastewater infrastructure. However, for drinking water systems, most of these requirements already exist under the Safe Drinking Water Act, 2002, so it is unclear how the new WOA requirements will affect, if at all, the planning practices for drinking water systems.
The WOA also authorizes MOE to establish performance targets relating to the “financing, operation or maintenance” of prescribed municipal services, and to direct service providers to review and report on their progress in meeting these performance targets. The ministry could potentially use this power to encourage poorly performing municipalities to improve their stormwater or wastewater systems.
ECO Comment
The goal of the WOWCA to support water conservation and “green” water technologies, practices and infrastructure is laudable. Additionally, the recognition of the importance – and interrelationships – of drinking water, wastewater and stormwater systems in protecting hydrological systems is also to be commended. However, most of the WOA is merely permissive – it provides government with the authority to implement measures that may promote water conservation, but does not require government to do so. The ECO urges MOE to promptly develop, in consultation with stakeholders and the public, the regulations necessary to implement the various components of this legislation.
While the WOA cites water conservation as an important goal, the ECO is disappointed that the Act fails to address some of the key measures for achieving this goal. First, the Act fails to directly address water pricing. The ECO has discussed the importance of water pricing extensively in past reports. Ontarians’ excessive consumption of water can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that water is grossly underpriced. Most municipal providers in Ontario charge artificially low water and sewer rates that are a small fraction of the rates in most other countries. In addition, user rates cover only a small fraction of the true costs of the services, with municipalities instead subsidizing their water and wastewater systems through property taxes and provincial grants. Increasing the cost of water and wastewater services can provide not only a major incentive for conservation, but also an important means for ensuring the long-term sustainability and financial self-sufficiency of water and wastewater systems.
Secondly, while the WOWCA includes measures to promote water conservation by government, the Ontario government is doing little to address the significant water usage by the industrial sectors. The ECO encourages MOE to use its existing powers (e.g., through conditions in Permits to Take Water) to push industrial water takers to use water more efficiently.
Finally, the ECO urges MOE to develop aggressive and measurable conservation targets for both the province and municipalities. Municipal conservation targets should ideally be set on a watershed basis in a manner that supports functioning hydrogeological systems and considers the cumulative pressures on the watershed.
For a more detailed review of this decision, please refer to Section 4.7 of the Supplement to this Annual Report. For ministry comments, please see Appendix C.
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| This is an article from the 2010/11 Annual Report to the Legislature from the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. |
Citing This Article:
Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. 2011. "Missed Opportunities under the Water Opportunities Act, 2010." Engaging Solutions, ECO Annual Report, 2010/11. Toronto: The Queen's Printer for Ontario. 98-100.
