Ford government water-taking reforms win applause from environmental critics

Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government has taken critics by surprise again, proposing updated regulations for water taking permits that are being applauded by environmentalists.

The new regulations would give municipalities an opportunity to oppose water taking permits for bottling companies, although it doesn’t appear to be a full veto, and would establish new priorities and stronger rules for the taking of groundwater in Ontario.

The issue came to a head in 2016 when multinational giant Nestlé outbid the small community of Wellington Centre for a well near Guelph that the township wants for its future drinking water supply. The David vs. Goliath story attracted international attention, all of it casting Nestlé Waters Canada in a negative light, and prompted a boycott of Nestlé by the Council of Canadians.

A series of articles I wrote at the time for The Canadian Press highlighted the fact Ontario was charging bottling companies just $3.71 for every million litres taken, igniting calls for higher fees.

The developments prompted the then-Liberal government to stop Nestlé from conducting tests on the well it purchased and impose a moratorium on new and expanded water taking permits for bottling. The Liberals also hiked the fee for water bottling companies to $503.71 per million litres.

It’s still ridiculously low, yet Ford’s Tories are not proposing an increase. The convenience and cheap price of bottled water create a huge and avoidable threat to the environment. All the cool kids use refillable containers now.

The Ford government extended the moratorium, while contracting a third party review of Ontario’s water taking permits that concluded the current system is sustainable and that bottling companies have a “negligible” impact on supply, something the sector always maintained.

But public sentiment is not on the side of water companies, partly because of predatory corporate behaviour, and because of the amount of their plastic bottles that end up in landfills.

Nestlé Waters Canada called Ontario’s proposed changes a step toward regulatory certainty, and said it would examine them before commenting further. It announced on Thursday it’s selling its Nestlé Pure Life business in Canada to Shelburne-based Ice River Springs.

Ontario also wants to set priorities for water taking when there is short supply and competing demands. Drinking water would be at the top of the list, followed by environmental needs such as maintaining stream flows and then agricultural irrigation, and then would come commercial and industrial uses of water, such as irrigating golf courses.

It’s hard to argue with those priorities, but golf courses and gravel companies should pay at least the same $503.71 per million litres as water bottling companies. They should all pay more.

The regulations are a welcome change of direction for a two-year-old government that until now has focused on dismantling environmental protections, and help ease fears raised after Ford was caught on video promising developers he’d “open a big chunk” of the Greenbelt for them. He had to quickly backtrack, and now vows to never allow development on the 800,000 hectares of environmentally sensitive lands and farms.

The activist group Environmental Defence says it seems the government listened to community concerns as it drafted the new water taking regulations, which are posted on Ontario’s environmental registry and open for public comment until Aug. 2. The time to speak is when the government is listening, and protecting our water is more important than ever before.