HIGH RISK WATER TAKING PERMITS

Firstly it's even debatable as to whether the province of Ontario knows which water takings actually are high risk to groundwater supplies and which aren't. This access to large volumes of groundwater is occurring in a knowledge vacuum according to Ontario's Environmental Commissioner, Diane Saxe. She states in the Waterloo Region Record article of October 28/16 titled "Province's glass is half empty" that "We're making decisions with our eyes closed. We don't have enough information yet we're allowing millions of litres to be taken out of the ground.".

Ms. Saxe is concerned that climate change will increase the stresses on Ontario's groundwater supplies as there are likely to be more frequent and longer droughts. With municipalities, mines, construction companies and golf courses also using large quantities of groundwater daily we may be reaching a point of depleting the groundwater in some areas. They extract 1.4 trillion litres of Ontario's surface and ground water supplies every day. There is a one time permit fee of $750 for low and medium risk water takings and a $3,000 fee for so called high risk extractions. As if $3,000 would do anything at all to mitigate or restore a depleted aquifer. That fee just like the $3.71 per million litres groundwater extraction fee for water bottlers is ridiculous and outrageous. It is yet again Canadian (Ontario) citizens subsidizing corporate interests via giving away public resources. We subsidize polluters by paying their costs for water treatment after they've polluted it and we essentially give away water resources to other corporations so they can profit by selling our own water back to us.