If you answered yes to the question above, then this section is for you. While Ontario’s Drinking Water Source Protection Program is generally focused on protecting municipal water sources, over 50% of the population within the Trent Conservation Coalition Source Protection Region is on private wells or drawing water from lakes, including most cottagers. A recent initiative launched in 2022 in conjuction with the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks is intended to extend the Best Practices learned from the Source Protection Program and regional Source Protection Plans, to owners of private systems, to increase local knowledge about the threats to their water sources, and what steps they can all take to protect them.

The official webpage of the Best Practices guidance from the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks is available online here: https://www.ontario.ca/document/best-practices-source-water-protection

What are the Best Practices for Source Water Protection?

For a more indepth and engaging look at the Best Practices, we'd recommend the following storyboard walk-through of the guidance here, with helpful figures, images and quizes to best ensure your understanding: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/1c2e125a15754cebbb9aa5dac4fa2202

It contains information that can help cottagers, homeowners, small villages and rural schools that don’t have the luxury of safe municipal water.

In conjunction with this effort launched by the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, the Trent Conservation Coalition Source Protection aims to recognize the vulnerabilities of private wells, surface water intakes, and non-municipal drinking water systems, and seek to educate, provide resources and raise awareness of the threats to those drinking water sources and ways to mitigate the threats.

If you have any questions or concerns about this guidance, feel free to contact the Best Practices Coordinator, Trent Bos, at: trent.bos@ltc.on.ca