Thursday, June 25, 2009 - The Ministry of the Environment today released a discussion paper on Source Protection Planning on the Environmental Registry. 

The purpose of this discussion paper is to seek feedback from the public, stakeholders, communities, and First Nations on the proposed content of the regulations, including the potential policy approaches to be used by the local source protection committees. To help gather feedback, a number of specific questions are posed throughout this paper.

Specifically, the discussion paper aims to address the following topics:

• An overview of the minimum content requirements for source protection plans, under the Clean Water Act, 2006;
• The various approaches available to policy developers to reduce risks posed by drinking water threats;
• Additional requirements for drinking water threat policies that the province is considering including in forthcoming regulations on the content and preparation of source protection plans;
• Consideration of other policies that may be included in the source protection plans - namely monitoring policies and policies related to the Great Lakes;
• A summary and overview of the consultation requirements; and
• Considerations related to some of the Act’s administrative requirements regarding annual progress reports and source protection plan amendments.

In addition to generating public feedback the paper is designed to help source protection committees respond to inquiries about source protection plans, while consulting on their locally developed assessment reports. The Ministry of the Environment has developed this discussion paper before the completion of the local assessment reports so that source protection authorities, committees, municipalities, the public, and other interested parties have an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the ministry’s preliminary views on the analysis needed to develop effective source protection plan policies for their area.

The SPP Discussion Paper can be found here.