Clean Water Act

The Ontario government passed the Clean Water Act in 2006 to implement some of the recommendations of the Walkerton Inquiry.

The Clean Water Act ensures communities protect their drinking water supplies through prevention - by developing collaborative, watershed-based source protection plans that are locally driven and based on science.

The Act established source protection areas and source protection regions. It also created a local multi-stakeholder source protection committee for each area. These committees identify significant existing and future risks to their municipal drinking water sources and develop plans to address these risks.

The Ontario government paid the entire cost of developing source protection plans.

The Clean Water Act and Regulations

• The Clean Water Act
• Regulation 288/07: Source Protection Committees
• Regulation 287/07: General
• Regulation 284/07: Source Protection Areas and Regions
• Regulation 231/07: Service of Documents

• Plain Language Guide to the Clean Water Act 2006: An overview of the contents of the Clean Water Act

Other resources

These are links to the website of the Ontario Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. The documents on these pages are used to develop source protection plans.

• Tables of Drinking Water Threats: A list of activities the province considers to be potential threats to drinking water.
• Director's Technical Rules for Assessment Reports: The technical rules required to be followed when assessing risks to drinking water sources under the Clean Water Act.
• MOECC Source Protection page - A website about source water protection maintained by the ministry