Maintaining safe and adequate water supplies in Ontario requires collaboration amongst many partners, including the Ontario government, Conservation Authorities, landowners and environmental groups. A series of collaborative Watershed Management Pilot (WMP) projects have recently been undertaken to implement innovative, practical approaches to managing local water resources.

Phase One

Phase One of the WMP projects produced six demonstration projects:

  1. Watershed Reporting: Improving Public Access to Information – a guide for Watershed Reporting using environmental indicators to measure watershed health
  2. Web-based Communications for Watershed Information Sharing – an interactive website that increases public awareness of and involvement in the Lake Simcoe Environmental Strategy program
  3. A Framework for Local Water-Use Decision Making on a Watershed Basis – a project designed to address challenges presented by escalating water demands and low water conditions across the province
  4. Watershed Economic Incentives through Phosphorus Trading and Water Quality – reviews best practices in Ontario and presents a framework for using economic incentives for phosphorus management
  5. Watershed Management in Ontario: Lessons Learned and Best Practices – provides a generic framework for initiating and implementing watershed and subwatershed management plans at the local level
  6. Enhancing Water Storage within a Watershed through Wetland Restoration – examines the use of municipal drains as tools to restore surrounding wetlands and safeguard against low water levels in agricultural areas

Factsheet summaries and the full reports for these projects are available on Conservation Ontario’s website.

Phase Two

Phase Two of the WMP projects includes four additional demonstration projects that focus more specifically on some of the technical issues related to protecting drinking water sources. Projects include:

  1. My Land, Our Water – Access to information related to surface and groundwater for rural communities. (Partners: Maitland Valley and Saugeen Valley Conservation Authorities)
  2. Source Protection Planning in Rural Ontario: How Much Data is Available? How Much is Enough? (Partners: Lower Trent Region Conservation Authority, Ganaraska Region Conservation Authority, Crowe Valley Conservation Authority)
  3. Development of a Water Quality Model for Nutrient Management (Partners: Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority, Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority, Kawartha Conservation
  4. Rapid Assessment of Potential Surface Water Conditions Using Landscape and Base Flow Indices (Partners: Watershed Science Centre - Trent University, Northeast Science and Information Section - Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources)


    5. The Phase Two projects will be completed in the spring of 2005. Project summaries and reports will be made available on Conservation Ontario’s website during the summer of 2005.