Ontario: Minister’s Annual Report on Drinking Water 2015

Ontario’s drinking water continues to be among the best protected in the world, says the province's Minister of the Environment and Climate Change in a report that focuses on what is being done to protect Ontario’s rivers, lakes and groundwater.

The Minister’s Annual Report on Drinking Water 2015 also looks more closely at how the government is working to reduce the impacts of climate change on water, the MOECC said in a news release.

Included is an update on the ministry’s work with First Nations and the federal government to help improve drinking water on reserves and a summary of the Chief Drinking Water Inspector’s report highlighting the state of drinking water across the province.

Minister Glen Murray noted in the release that 99.8 per cent of more than 533,000 test results from municipal residential drinking water systems met Ontario’s strict drinking water quality standards in 2014-15.

The report lists several water-related projects including one supported by the Showcasing Water Innovation program at Constance Lake First Nation, a community in Northern Ontario. Recently, the community switched from a lake source to a groundwater source for its drinking water because of blue-green algae in Constance Lake. However, the surface water treatment system was not equipped to treat elevated iron and manganese in the ground water. The community created a water management plan and chose to incorporate green sand technology into a new water treatment plant funded by the federal government, to be completed in 2015.