Protect our water

Protect our water

image of Protect our water

We now have a unique opportunity to protect precious water features across the Greater Golden Horseshoe. Heeding our collective call for a ‘Bluebelt’ to safeguard the region’s moraines, headwaters, river valleys and wetlands, the Government of Ontario has initiated a 90-day public consultation on a study area for potential Greenbelt expansion.

We invite you to join us in expressing your support for growing the Greenbelt to protect our water and urging the government to proceed without delay.

The proposed study area includes ground and surface water features in Simcoe, Dufferin, Brant and Wellington Counties and Waterloo Region. The building ...

We now have a unique opportunity to protect precious water features across the Greater Golden Horseshoe. Heeding our collective call for a ‘Bluebelt’ to safeguard the region’s moraines, headwaters, river valleys and wetlands, the Government of Ontario has initiated a 90-day public consultation on a study area for potential Greenbelt expansion.

We invite you to join us in expressing your support for growing the Greenbelt to protect our water and urging the government to proceed without delay.

The proposed study area includes ground and surface water features in Simcoe, Dufferin, Brant and Wellington Counties and Waterloo Region. The building blocks of the proposed study area are moraines, cold water streams and wetlands.

While this provincial proposal is a good start, a more systematic approach is needed to make sure that all sensitive features and functions of the region’s watersheds are fully protected from urbanization. 

BLUEBELT MAP

For example, the study area should include:

  • The headwaters of the Humber, Don and Rouge rivers;
  • Duffins and Carruthers creeks;
  • The south slope of the Oak Ridges Moraine and the Iroquois Shoreline along Lake Ontario in Northumberland County;
  • Luther Marsh;
  • The entirety of the Waterloo and Orangeville moraines in Wellington County;
  • Grand River watershed in Brant County; and
  • The remainder of the Lake Simcoe basin as well as vulnerable water resources in the rest of Simcoe County.

We need to protect all of these vulnerable areas. Adding them to the Greenbelt would permanently safeguard critical water supplies, natural areas and prime farmland from urban sprawl. Such protection is vital to community health and resilience in the face of climate change. With flooding, drought and extreme weather events increasing in frequency and intensity, we simply cannot afford to pave over those landscape features which store, filter and supply our water.

Growing the Greenbelt into these areas would also conserve and connect significant wildlife habitats that support many at-risk species such as redside dacerapids clubtail dragonfly and wood turtle. It would help address the ongoing destruction and degradation of stream, river and shoreline habitats which are key threats to these species.

You can help demonstrate widespread public support for Greenbelt expansion to protect our water, wildlife and communities. Every voice matters.

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Grow the Greenbelt

We need your help to urge the Government Ontario to grow the Greenbelt and protect at-risk waters in the Greater Golden Horseshoe.


Sign the letter below, by March 07, 2018 in response to the proposal called Protecting Water for Future Generations: Growing the Greenbelt in the Outer Ring (EBR 013-1661).

 

The decisions made now will have a lasting impact for our water, nature and communities.

 

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