Summary

• Under the Clean Water Act, community-led groups called source protection committees write plans and oversee the protection of drinking water sources in Ontario.
• The jurisdiction of the committees is aligned with the boundaries of conservation authorities, and experts say the recent amalgamation of authorities could also affect the committees.
• The province has not appointed 15 of the 19 source protection committee chairs, leaving some experts questioning whether change is afoot.

As the Doug Ford government moves to consolidate conservation authorities from 36 to nine, many are concerned about the impact on Ontario’s drinking water. 

Conservation authorities have long been tasked with protecting Ontario watersheds by safeguarding local drinking water sources and reducing the risks from natural hazards like flooding, erosion and drought. But the government’s legislation for their amalgamation — the biggest disruption to the agencies in 80 years — indicates there may be changes coming to the way they help preserve access to fresh water for more than 80 per cent of Ontario residents. 

Since 2006, municipal drinking water has been governed by 19 source protection committees, community-led groups with directors from industries like agriculture, manufacturing and tourism that hold conservation authorities and municipalities accountable for properly managing drinking water. Within each conservation authority, designated staff serve as liaisons to these committees, providing necessary data and carrying out any suggested protective actions.

“Source protection committees are purposefully local. They’re the people that drink the water they are protecting,” Katie Stammler, water quality scientist and project manager for the source water protection committee at the Essex Region Conservation Authority, told The Narwhal.

The committees were created on the heels of the water contamination crisis in Walkerton, Ont. In May 2000, seven people died and some 2,300 people became ill when manure from a nearby farm leached into a well due to a failure of safety checks in the local water treatment system. 

An inquiry into the crisis resulted in dozens of recommendations, including creating source protection committees. These groups were officially enacted by the passage of the Clean Water Act. Each one was designed with the boundaries of conservation authorities in mind and tasked with writing a plan to protect the sources of drinking water in that region from threats such as fuel, sewage, road salt and agricultural runoff.

In the years since they were formed, source protection committees seemed to be “untouchable,” Lynn Dollin, once long-time chair of the South Georgian Bay-Lake Simcoe Source Protection Committee, told The Narwhal. Successive Ontario governments didn’t want to change anything “because no one wants to risk another Walkerton.”But things might be changing now.

The Ontario government’s move to reduce the number of conservation authorities has meant that each authority now covers a much larger area. The Narwhal obtained a government slide deck presented to conservation authorities leaders earlier this month that shows drinking water source protection “remains a core mandated responsibility” for the nine proposed regional authorities, and that source protection plans “will continue to be carried out.” 

But in the same slide deck, the government also notes “changes may be needed under the Clean Water Act and associated regulations” to “clarify” how source protection committees would operate under the new structure. 

“We’re not making any fundamental changes [to source protection committees],” Ontario Environment Minister Todd McCarthy said in an interview with The Narwhal: the 19 committees will remain as they are and work with the nine newly proposed regional conservation authorities, though he said their jurisdictions are “a work in progress.”  

“Clean water is absolutely essential, and Ontario’s is best protected in the world. That’s going to continue,” he said. “The idea is to make sure it doesn’t change by better resourcing and better supporting [them] equally across Ontario.”

McCarthy added that there may be some legislative “housekeeping” in the fall to ensure “alignment” between the new regional conservation authorities and source protection committees. 

The absence of details raises red flags for experts. 

“They cut. Now they cut and tinker,” one central Ontario conservation authority official said. “They’re saying nothing is going to change, but in practice, that remains to be seen. … All the changes they’ve made so far have delayed work operations. They like to pretend otherwise.”

The Narwhal spoke to 12 people, including lawyers, members of three source protection committees and several conservation authority staff, many of whom spoke anonymously for fear of retribution. As conservation authorities get bigger, these experts worry about the loss of local input, knowledge and protections. 

Already, the chair positions at 15 of the 19 committees are vacant. To many, this quiet erosion of leadership and a loosening of water laws in the province are indicators that a system put in place to prevent another drinking water crisis is now in flux. 

Most source protection committees still don’t have government-appointed leaders

Nearly 20 years ago, Dollin, now mayor of Innisfill, Ont., was one of 19 source protection committee chairs appointed by the Ontario government to help take care of the province’s complex system of local drinking water sources.

Back then, her committee’s first task was “a little unnerving,” she said. “I was shocked how there was no good, complete list of where our municipal drinking water systems were.” So they created one, along with guidelines on how to protect them to ensure local drinking water sources don’t become contaminated or overused. 

Dollin’s term as head of South Georgian Bay-Lake Simcoe Source Protection Committee ended in August 2025; she was told by a ministry official she would not be reappointed, though she said no reason was given. Her position hasn’t been filled since. 

As of April 14, the government had not appointed several chairs — something it is legally required to do under the Clean Water Act — since summer 2025.

“The absence of appointed chairs over the past year has created some uncertainty at the committee level, particularly around governance, leadership continuity and decision-making authority,” John Mesman, managing director of property, conservation, lands and community outreach for South Nation Conservation, told The Narwhal. 

A lack of chair appointments, others say, may indicate source protection committees are a low priority amidst the amalgamation of Ontario’s conservation authorities. Many told The Narwhal communication between conservation authorities and ministry staff have been eroding since the government under former premier Mike Harris first cut funding in 1995.

“It seems the ministry doesn’t understand the source protection program, so it doesn’t bother to think about it,” the central Ontario conservation authority staff member said. “We started getting alarmed by ministry decisions a while ago on a number of issues. It’s been consistent, our comments are not being heard.”

That’s especially challenging as water supply gets more complicated. In recent weeks, the government has proposed permitting communal wells for private development. That would mean a new subdivision, for example, could draw from its own well instead of tapping into municipal water services. Sources who spoke to The Narwhal were concerned about this because communal wells aren’t currently overseen by source protection committees. 

“We need source protection leaders now more than ever to be present at the table,” a conservation authority official in western Ontario said. “As this government pushes approvals for development, we need to make sure water is not an afterthought.” 

A Ministry of Environment official told The Narwhal, “a competitive process will soon be underway” for source protection committee chair appointments. 

New boundaries of conservation authorities could affect source protection committees 

Not only do many source protection committees not have leaders right now, but they also don’t know what their jurisdictions will be post-conservation authority amalgamation.

“I don’t think [the government] contemplated a whole scale change like this,” Theresa McClenaghan, executive director of the Canadian Environmental Law Association, said. “A lot of people don’t realize that most local drinking water sources are protected by plans that were created by these committees over many years.” 

Per the requirements of the Clean Water Act, the government has two options, McLenaghan said: realign source protection boundaries and governance to reflect the new larger regional conservation authorities or maintain the current structure within the new regional authorities. 

Minister McCarthy told The Narwhal the boundaries “are not changing at this time,” but the exact boundaries will be finalized in the fall, informed by consultations with new local watershed councils the ministry is creating to facilitate the transition. 

“We’ll have to see how this works out,” he said. “Right now, the reality is nine watershed-based regional conservation authorities are what we proposed … and with those 19 [source protection committees], we’ll have to see how their boundaries match up or align.” 

McLenaghan said if the committees stay as they are, “that’s good news,” but “there will still be some potential disruptions” as several source protection regions combine under a single conservation authority.

Right now, some source protection areas, such as Essex County, stand alone, while others like the Thames-Sydenham Source Protection Region, combine several conservation authority jurisdictions. Per a preliminary analysis by the Canadian Environmental Law Association, the amalgamation would see the inverse of this, where one regional conservation authority has several source protection regions within it. For example, both the Lake Huron and Western Lake authorities would each incorporate three source protection agencies.

The new regional conservation authorities will be “very, very busy” managing so many source protection committees under the new system, the central Ontario conservation authority official said.

Under the amalgamation plan, Stammler’s Essex County Conservation Authority now falls under the Western Lake Erie regional authority, which has boundaries spanning from Niagara through Halton and Peel Region.

She, and others, said they’re concerned this will result in a reduction in the hyper-localized focus on water that conservation authorities provide.

“I think it’s going to undermine Ontario’s ability to protect drinking water,” Ontario Greens Leader Mike Schreiner said. “I think the amalgamation of [conservation authorities] is going to contravene the recommendations of the Walkerton inquiry around source water protection.”“I mean, how can you have 19 source water protection committees across the province and nine [conservation authorities]? And how is that going to work together, especially when you’re undermining local decision-making expertise?”

It’s something local industry representatives are similarly concerned with. 

Chris Snip, an independent agronomist and water protection advocate from Essex County, has built a career helping farmers grow better crops with less impact on the environment from fertilizer use. He joined the Essex region’s source water protection committee six years ago to support the group’s understanding of agriculture and the sector’s role in maintaining water quality.

As with many in Ontario’s farming community, the Walkerton tragedy casts a long shadow for Snip. With the Ford government’s changes to water protection, in favour of easing development, Snip wonders if the province is forgetting lessons of the past.

“People died, and the policies around source water protection were based on recommendations from those deaths and injuries, and this provincial government is basically, you know, turning its nose up to it, not caring about what happened then,” he said.

“History is bound to repeat itself, especially if we don’t remember.”

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In the early evening of Aug. 26, 2021, an explosion rocked the small town of Wheatley, Ont. Hydrogen sulfide gas had ignited after leaking from a gas well long-buried under a building in the town’s core.

The event saw more than 60 households and 30-odd businesses in the area evacuated. Twenty people were injured. Unfortunately, it was only a symptom of a larger problem.

Ontario is home to tens of thousands of old oil and gas wells. Many were dug before regulations existed for properly plugging and abandoning inactive wells. They can leak gases into the atmosphere including highly flammable and poisonous hydrogen sulfide and planet-warming methane, posing risks to human health and safety and contributing to greenhouse gas pollution.

Properly remediating these wells is an expensive process, and the Ontario government doesn’t have enough funds to cover the cost. 

Moreover, new wells continue to be drilled, and the security deposit required by the Ontario government isn’t near enough to cover the cost of remediation, should it fall to the province. It’s so disproportionate to the cost that one industry consultant suggested the deposit should either be increased or abandoned altogether — to “communicate to the public the reality of the situation.” That advice came to light in a series of documents accessed by The Narwhal through freedom of information legislation.

Here’s what you need to know about Ontario’s old oil and gas well problem, and where new wells and carbon storage fit into the complicated puzzle.

There are tens of thousands of old wells in Ontario and many are still unaccounted for in public records

Southern Ontario was the early epicentre of what became Canada’s national petroleum industry, with commercial drilling for oil and natural gas beginning in the late 1800s.

A geospatial Ontario map shows the sites of oil and gas wells across the southwestern part of the province — from quiet rural areas to the bottom of Lake Erie and even in busy urban centres like downtown Toronto.

According to a report by the journal Geoscience Canada, 10,000 wells are estimated to have been operating in Ontario by the early 1900s — but records only exist for 1,500. By 1970, 50,000 wells had been drilled, but the province only has records for 27,000.

Given these statistics, the Geoscience report authors concluded “there may be tens of thousands of unrecorded or lost wells in southwestern Ontario.”

Capping wells is expensive, and Ontario doesn’t have the funds to do so

Some of Ontario’s old wells were properly plugged once they became inactive, but others were dug before proper plugging standards existed. The inadequate materials used to fill and cap them degrade over time and can allow fluids to surface and leak. The cost to fix this problem is significant.

Landowners and municipalities shoulder the financial responsibility of properly capping orphan wells, which are inactive wells that have no known operator. It’s an enormous bill. The Ministry of Natural Resources maintains an abandoned works program to financially support well-capping, and the program has spent $29.5 million to date to cap 415 wells — at an average cost of $71,084 per well. 

In June 2023, an additional $7.5 million was allocated to support municipalities over three years in risk and emergency preparedness related to old wells. The funds are part of a wider $23.6-million provincial strategy to identify and plug old oil and gas wells.

But at an average cost of $71,000 to plug one well, it would cost more than $700 million to plug 10,000 sites, and that’s just a portion of the known wells in the province.

Robert Sharon, director of infrastructure services for the municipality of Leamington, near Wheatley, told The Narwhal, “The funding the [Ministry of Natural Resources] receives to do this work is nowhere near adequate given the magnitude of the problem.”

Oil and gas companies’ security deposits do not cover the actual cost of remediation

For new wells being drilled, oil and gas companies pay a security deposit that can be used should remediation fall to the province — because the company has gone into insolvency, or walked away for other reasons. But documents obtained through freedom of information legislation suggest current securities are nowhere near enough to cover capping costs or additional hazards. The government currently requires between $3,000 and $10,000 in security for wells drilled on land, depending on the depth, and $15,000 for underwater wells.

In an October 2023 email to a provincial oil and gas working group, one industry advisor noted, “The public is led to believe the security will look after the wells and site remediation. This is simply not the case. If an operator declares bankruptcy, there is generally not enough security to properly deal with abandonment.”

Days later, the working group discussed a since-passed regulation that has removed exemptions and a cap on cumulative securities for operators with multiple oil and gas wells. Meeting minutes show Ministry of Natural Resources staff expressed the rationale was to “prevent further issues to what we currently have with orphaned wells in the province, [and] to ensure operators have sufficient funds to plug wells.”

An industry advisor suggested the province drop gas well securities entirely, given the actual cost

In communications with the oil and gas working group, the industry advisor suggested that, given the high cost of properly remediating wells, the province should either raise the amount required for security deposits or scrap securities altogether. 

They said the latter option would “save administrative costs for the industry and for the regulator and also communicate to the public the reality of the situation.”

“I think that most operators are responsible. Compliance with the regulatory requirements should be adequate to ensure operations are conducted safely and in an environmentally responsible manner. As the security amounts that exist are totally inadequate, these security requirements should be eliminated as they create extra red tape for minimal gains.”

As of Aug. 28, 2025, financial securities had not been raised or eliminated.

Proposed underground carbon storage could increase the risk of gas leaks

The same regulation that removed exemptions and caps on securities for new wells also allowed for testing around carbon storage, which is new to Ontario. The process for carbon storage sees carbon emissions, like those produced when fossil fuels are burned, captured and compressed into liquid form so they can be injected into caverns in the ground, rather than released into the atmosphere. Those caverns often come in the form of depleted oil and gas wells and saline aquifers. 

As the government heads back into session in October, second reading will continue on Bill 27, the Resource Management and Safety Act, which would actually allow carbon storage to go forward in Ontario at a commercial scale — meaning greenhouse gas producers can inject and store carbon underground, following guidelines developed by the province.

Critics, including opposition MPs in Ontario, have noted the risk of leaks where carbon is injected, particularly in areas with an abundance of old — and unknown — wells that create pathways to the surface.

— Compiled by Paloma Pacheco

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A new park. That’s what the small town of Wheatley, Ont., is building on the large empty lot at the centre of its downtown core.

Announced at a community party in June, it will take the place of nine buildings, razed following an explosion in August 2021 when hydrogen sulphide, leaking from a long-forgotten gas well, ignited.

The explosion in Wheatley wasn’t unprecedented. A similar event occurred in 1936, in the same place, though it was largely blamed on a gas heater, and again in 1993 — this time a well or crack deep in the earth was likely the cause. And it could happen again.

Gas wells like those found in Wheatley are all over southern Ontario. Most are in quiet rural settings, but they’re also found on the bottom of Lake Erie or in built-up urban areas, like one near the corner of King and Yonge streets in downtown Toronto. Some are visibly marked, but many you wouldn’t even know exist. Some are securely capped — known in industry parlance as being officially “sealed and abandoned” — while others were dug before standards for properly plugging and maintaining them existed, posing a threat to infrastructure, human health and the environment. But making Ontario’s inactive oil and gas wells safe is expensive — and complicated.

Landowners and municipalities carry the cost of properly capping inactive wells without known operators (known as orphan wells) and, even if they can pay for it, researchers say there are likely tens of thousands of old wells we haven’t even located yet. Beyond that, Ontario has nowhere near enough money in its fund for reclaiming new wells that are drilled, should their owners not take responsibility, as many failed to before. While Ontario now requires industry to put down funds for reclaiming active wells, should the company default in some way, the amount is far below the actual cost of capping, according to internal government documents obtained by The Narwhal via freedom of information legislation. So much so that one advisor noted in an email to a provincial oil and gas working group that “the public is led to believe the security will look after the wells and site remediation. This is simply not the case.”

While no one died as a result of the 2021 Wheatley explosion, the heart of the town was partially destroyed. A hundred or more homes and businesses were evacuated while authorities located the source of the leak, demolished the remaining damaged buildings and remediated the site. The process took years, and cost tens of millions of dollars.

As Ontario communities grapple with rising populations and municipal boundaries expand, the problem posed by old gas wells, as well as new ones, grows. And so does the cost to fix it.

Ontario was the epicentre of early fossil fuel development in Canada

Southern Ontario was the early epicentre of what became the national petroleum industry, with commercial drilling for oil and natural gas beginning in 1858 and 1889, respectively. Drilling projects quickly proliferated across the region as private companies and individual landowners sought to capitalize on the region’s fossil fuel resources.

According to a report published in 2023 by the journal Geoscience Canada, 10,000 petroleum wells are estimated to have been operating in Ontario at the turn of the 20th century — but records only exist for 1,500. By 1970, two years before Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources was established, some 50,000 wells had been drilled, though records still only exist for 27,000 in total. Given these statistics, the Geoscience report authors conclude “there may be tens of thousands of unrecorded or lost wells in southwestern Ontario.”

Wells are supposed to be plugged when it’s no longer economically viable to pump out oil or gas. But in the past, in the absence of a permitting process or environmental and safety regulations, materials commonly used to cap and fill wells — wood and gravel, for example — acted as conduits for the movement of fluids to the soil surface. As the capping materials degrade over time, the risk of a leak heightens. It doesn’t help that the metal casings that would make wells more conspicuous were often removed and repurposed to make ships during the Second World War, one expert told the CBC.

The hazards posed by well fluids moving up and leaking from old oil, gas and water wells are many. Hydrogen sulphide — the trigger for Wheatley’s misfortunes — is both highly flammable and poisonous. Oil can contaminate soil, surface water and groundwater, while greenhouse gases like methane contribute to atmospheric pollution. An article published by Environmental Science and Technology in April 2025 found total annual methane emissions from non-producing wells across Canada could be 230,000 tonnes — seven times higher than estimates in the National Inventory Report, the country’s analysis of its greenhouse gas sources and sinks.

Given the poor condition of many plugged wells, and the density of oil and gas wells in Ontario generally, the Geoscience Canada report authors argued “further work is required to locate unreported or lost wells, and to develop new techniques to permanently plug wells to limit gas leakage, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve public and environmental safety.”

Plugging Ontario’s gas wells will cost a lot of money

To limit the risk posed by old, inactive wells, they first have to be cleared of whatever scrap material was used to plug them or any debris that covers them, then filled and capped properly with cement. Many factors determine how simple or complex the process is, including how deep the well is and in what state of repair the materials used in the well’s construction are. Hydrocarbon wells can range widely in depth — 400 metres below the lake-bed for gas wells in Lake Erie, for example, or 1,100 metres down for oil wells on land.

The operator is supposed to pay to cap wells that are no longer active. When an operator cannot be identified — which is common, given the age of many drilling projects and lack of historical documentation — the cost falls to the landowner, whether that’s a farmer, a homeowner, a local government or otherwise. And even documented and relatively accessible wells can incur significant costs. 

Recognizing the financial burden old wells can pose, Ontario maintains an abandoned works program to financially support landowners.

The program has spent $29.5 million to date to plug 415 wells — an average cost of $71,084 per well. In June 2023, the province announced plans to double the funds. An additional $7.5 million was also allocated to “directly support municipalities in their efforts to reduce risks and enhance emergency preparedness,” over a three-year period. That could mean responding to suspected leaks or, in the worst cases, explosions. Those funds are part of a wider $23.6-million investment in a province-wide strategy for identifying and plugging old oil and gas wells. 

The investment is significant, but it’s dwarfed by the problem. At an average cost of $71,000 to plug one well, it would cost more than $700 million to plug 10,000 sites, and that’s just a portion of the old wells in the province.

Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources, which houses the petroleum operations section, did not respond to The Narwhal’s questions about securities and well reclamation, nor provide clarification on funding for its inactive well strategy.

Brett Authier, a Wheatley-area resident and onshore operations manager with oil and gas company Lagasco, is regularly called in to identify and stop leaks, and contracted to properly plug wells. Authier generally budgets $70,000 for most well-maintained sites. Poorly maintained sites, or those with little-to-no records, are more expensive.

“A lot of the old wells have old fence posts in them, pieces of steel, rock,” Authier said. “You have to drill down through old plugs, and basically start from scratch.” Faulty or degraded well casings also have to be sealed.

The core of Ontario’s old well conundrum, Authier said, stems from a lack of regulation over decades of resource exploitation.

Other provinces, including Saskatchewan and Alberta, have received federal assistance for oil and gas well remediation. The private sector in Ontario has also sought federal remediation funding, with the Ontario Petroleum Institute — a non-profit representing oil and gas companies in the province — requesting the Government of Canada provide $270 million for an Ontario orphan well reclamation program. Detailed in a 2020 letter to then finance minister, Bill Morneau, the institute argued such funding would reflect similar investments made for the remediation of inactive wells in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Today, energy companies are required to provide financial assurance that active wells will be properly plugged at the end of their useful life. A proposed bill, the Resource Management and Safety Act, seeks to increase the minister of natural resources’ power to address well-related hazards with the operator’s financial securities. The backgrounder on the bill notes, “If left unaddressed, deteriorating oil and gas wells can create hazards that threaten both public safety and the environment.” The bill was debated in June but has yet to pass, and also includes regulations to allow for underground carbon storage, which critics and opposition MPs have noted could increase the risk of gas leaks.

“If used to address a hazard, the ministry could, with these proposed amendments, draw on a non-compliant operator’s financial security to carry out necessary actions, such as plugging or closing valves,” the bill reads.

However, documents obtained through freedom of information legislation suggest current securities are nowhere near enough to cover capping costs, not to mention additional hazards. The government currently requires between $3,000 and $10,000 in security for wells drilled on land, depending on the depth, and $15,000 for underwater wells.

In October 2023, a provincial oil and gas working group discussed a since–passed regulation that removed exemptions on paying security, as well as a cap on security for operators with multiple wells, according to the documents. Minutes from the meeting notes show Natural Resources Ministry staff expressed that, in terms of securities, the “rationale is to prevent further issues to what we currently have with orphaned wells in the province, [and] to ensure operators have sufficient funds to plug wells.” Another point from ministry representatives states: “Goal is to protect the public and environment, regardless of type of project (e.g., oil and gas, hydrocarbon, other special projects).”

In the same discussion, the Ontario Petroleum Institute voiced concerns on behalf of operators over the requirement for securities to be paid when wells are transferred over to new owners: “There may be no one willing to take over assets, which would limit ability to pass wells on to family.” That requirement was dropped in the final regulation.

As part of the working group discussions, one industry consultant suggested in an October 2023 email that, with the security falling so short of the actual cost of plugging wells, the province should take one of two actions: raise the amount required for well securities, or scrap the requirement altogether.

Removing the requirement for securities, he said, “would save administrative costs for the industry and for the regulator and also communicate to the public the reality of the situation.”

He continues, “I think that most operators are responsible. Compliance with the regulatory requirements should be adequate to ensure operations are conducted safely and in an environmentally responsible manner.”

Neither of those changes appear to have been made in the regulation as of Aug. 28, 2025.

The Ontario Petroleum Institute did not respond to requests for comment on its letter, as well as the issue of securities.

Growing costs and challenges of managing Ontario’s old wells

Back in Wheatley, Howard Gabert, resident and chair of a local taskforce established to spur the community’s recovery, said some 60 to 70 households, plus around 30 businesses, were displaced by the explosion, with another 20 people injured. Some people were unable to access their properties for more than a year, Gabert said, while others found their insurance providers dropping coverage or dramatically raising rates. 

Investigators eventually uncovered and remediated three wells. But gas continued to leak. A fourth well was only uncovered and capped in 2024 after the remaining buildings were demolished and removed. 

The Ontario government has provided more than $50 million to the community since the explosion in 2021. Funding was used for initial emergency support, investigation and remediation. 

Moving forward, Robert Sharon, infrastructure services director for Wheatley’s neighbouring community of Leamington, said the risks wells pose to human and environmental health can complicate development planning. Determining setback limits — how far new constructions must be from wells — is a common dilemma for municipal planners. 

Setback limits are required for active wells, Sharon said, but there’s no such regulation for old wells on privately owned land. Municipalities are left to determine what constitutes safe setback distances for new developments. And all of this relies on knowing wells are there in the first place.

“While it may seem logical to be conservative and use, say, the greatest setback for a licensed well of 75 metres, keep in mind that a circle with a radius of 75 metres has a land area of 17,600 metres square, or 4.3 acres,” Sharon said. Since wells are common in already built-up areas, maximizing the distance between wells, people and infrastructure is “incredibly difficult.” 

Imagine having to take four football fields worth of space out of Toronto’s Financial District — or such a sizable portion out of a planned subdivision in a smaller municipality.

Wheatley’s roughly 3,000 residents are still trying to put the past four years and the explosion that rocked its small downtown behind them, Gabert said. Canada Day 2025 saw the town gather for Fish Fest — an annual event celebrating the community’s maritime connections through concerts, competitions, a boat parade and car show. Just days before, it was nearly cancelled when hydrogen sulphide gas was detected from a new location not far from the explosion site. Local authorities quickly determined it posed a low risk, but it was jarring, nonetheless.  

“Nobody expected this to surface 150 metres away from where the other ones are,” Gabert said. “Now we’re playing whack-a-mole. There’s just another weak spot.”

“It feels like it’s never-ending. But we don’t really have a choice but to press on. … It’s kind of like living under a volcano.”

Updated on Sept. 10, 2025, at 8:53 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to correct a statement that the private sector in Ontario has received federal funding for oil and gas well remediation. Rather, the private sector has requested that funding.

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From the window of a fishing boat, Andrew Taves has a clear view of how Lake Erie is changing. He’s been a commercial fisherman for just shy of seven years in Wheatley, Ont., which claims to be the largest freshwater commercial fishing port in the world. 

Taves and his crewmates set nets primarily for the most valuable and sought-after fish — yellow perch and pickerel — as well as a couple other species of lesser value. Sometimes they catch lamprey, gobies and other invasive fish, as well as significant quantities of low-value shad — a species that’s supposed to largely die off in winter, but which Taves suspects has proliferated due to warmer winter water temperatures.

Taves has yet to find grass carp in his crew’s nets, but it could be just a matter of time. 

The invasive fish have been caught off the coast of nearby Point Pelee National Park, Rondeau Provincial Park and elsewhere in Canadian waters. There are breeding populations of grass carp on the American side of Lake Erie. But collaboration between American and Canadian governments, research institutions and local communities have kept the species from gaining a strategic foothold. 

The massive freshwater system is no stranger to invasive species, but grass carp could upend the Great Lakes ecology, as well as the operations of some of the world’s most significant freshwater commercial fisheries. So far, the Great Lakes have successfully held grass carp at bay. Those involved in managing the grass carp — not to mention the fishermen who rely on the abundance of native fish — can only hope that success is sustainable. 

What are Asian carp?

Grass carp are one of four similar fish species known as Asian carp that originate in Eurasian rivers: grass, silver, big head and black carp. Each species has unique characteristics, but they can all get very big — up to 40 kilograms — and all four species are prolific eaters. Each day, carp can consume between five and ten per cent of their body weight in microscopic plant and animal life (phytoplankton and zooplankton). Grass carp also eat rooted aquatic plants. This feeding behaviour can devastate threatened wetland environments, and the fish that rely on them for spawning and nursery activities.

Grass and other Asian carp were imported to the United States in the 1970s as a biological method of cleaning ponds. Through flood events, dumping and other means, some eventually escaped their ponds to American lakes and rivers. There, they thrived.

With no natural predators, these species have successfully outcompeted native fish in waterways across vast swaths of the United States, most notably in parts of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Asian carp are estimated to comprise as much as 80 per cent of all aquatic biomass in some places, wreaking havoc on local biodiversity. The economic hit to both commercial and recreational fishing has also been profound.

Since 2007, it has been illegal to import live Asian carp to American states bordering the Great Lakes. Importing live fish to Ontario is also prohibited, but eviscerated fish can be brought in for the food market. Live imports in other parts of the United States are still permitted, as long as the fish are rendered infertile through a treatment applied when they’re newly hatched. 

But whether by ineffective treatment or illegal importation, the Great Lakes region now faces a constant threat of Asian carp entering its wider ecosystem. Thus far, barriers between the Great Lakes and Mississippi basins have kept them at bay, except for grass carp — the only Asian carp species found in the Great Lakes in any significant number to date. 

Grass carp make their Lake Erie debut

Chris Mayer, a professor at the Lake Erie Centre at the University of Toledo, Ohio, is a veteran in the study and control of grass carp in Lake Erie and its tributaries. Speaking to journalists and fishing charter captains at Ohio State University’s Stone Laboratory in August 2024, Mayer said grass carp have been identified in Lake Erie watersheds in small numbers since the 1980s. However, they were largely infertile, and spurred little concern. 

But in 2012, fertile grass carp were first identified near the mouth of Ohio’s Sandusky River, which opens into a bay of Lake Erie. The finding indicated some breeding populations had likely established themselves in parts of the Great Lakes system. This hypothesis was confirmed when, in 2015, grass carp eggs were found in the Sandusky River. In response, an inter-state surveillance and control effort began in 2017. 

“There aren’t any, or many fish that eat plants that are rooted to the bottom … This is a very unusual thing. They are very good at it, and can get very big,” Mayer said. “Our state is spending money to construct and connect wetlands to the lake. We don’t want to have this herbivore wiping out the vegetation that does good things for water quality, and provides good habitat for juvenile fish of other species.”

David Marson, manager of Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s aquatic invasive species program, described grass carp as “machines for feeding on vegetation” that can actually consume up to 40 per cent of their weight in rooted aquatic plants daily. 

“If we had a breeding population get into Rondeau Bay or Long Point — those are highly productive, highly valuable resources for a lot of our native fish species for spawning or fish rearing habitat, or other waterfowl and things as well. We don’t want these fish getting in there and consuming a lot of that vegetation,” Marson told The Narwhal.

In her August presentation, Mayer was even more blunt about the current situation: “With grass carp, we are past prevention because they are here. We’re in the stage of eradication or containment.”

Gone fishing: catching grass carp is easier said than done

Mayer, Marson and many others across a wide range of political, institutional and community borders have collaborated under the Great Lakes Fishery Commission to seek and destroy grass carp wherever they are found. 

The Americans maintain a constant force of people monitoring for the fish and their eggs, with a network of rapid-response fishing crews. In Ontario, Marson said four crews are employed full-time through the summer, with reduced operations the rest of the year. There are also separate “larval crews” for monitoring eggs in at-risk waterways, as well as multi-species monitoring crews in the St. Lawrence River. Indigenous partners help monitor remote areas such as northern Lake Huron. The Ontario government also co-operates in sampling.

Currently, an average of 150 to 200 grass carp on the American side of Lake Erie are caught each year. On the Canadian side, Marson said 33 have been caught since 2012. Most of these have been infertile — but not all.

A range of methods are used to catch grass carp, including different types of nets and electrofishing — using electricity to stun fish to the surface, where they can be collected and euthanized. Captured fish are brought to laboratories and analyzed for age, fertility and other biological indicators. 

Recreational anglers who catch grass carp also provide opportunities for concerted eradication efforts. Marson related one instance, where a fisherman on Lake Gibson, in Niagara, Ont., thought he landed a once-in-a-lifetime lunker, as an example why public awareness campaigns also comprise part of the cross-border control strategy. 

“It was his birthday, and he was like ‘Look how lucky I was to catch this!’ — and released it. But we were able to track them down. They didn’t do anything wrong. They didn’t realize what they had. So, we approached them, figured out where it was and went out with our crews … It wasn’t just one fish, it turned out to be ten fish we removed from there,” Marson said.

Mayer said determining the best fishing methods and times of year to capture grass carp is an ongoing challenge. And some areas are very hard to reach, making regular analysis a challenge. Current fishing methods are also best suited to catch grass carp that are at least four years old, while sexual maturity occurs at three years.

“They get a year of reproduction in before our methods are kicking in … But it’s better to know we have this problem,” Mayer said. She added their analysis of captured grass carp indicates average maturity is rising over time. Fewer young fish in the population mix suggests the control efforts are having an effect in limiting reproduction. 

Cautious optimism about keeping grass carp at bay

In Canadian waters, Marson said there’s been no detection of grass carp breeding.

If grass carp were filling fishing boats every time they launched, or leaping out of the water en masse as other species of Asian carp do in the Mississippi River, Mayer said, “the horse [would be] out of the barn.” Thankfully, this has not come to fruition. 

But the risk of grass carp getting out of hand is still real, however, as is the risk posed by the other three Asian carp species.

“It wouldn’t take a long time. We would only need ten males and ten females, and that would be sufficient to really lead us down the road to an invasion,” Marson said.

For fishermen like Andrew Taves, it’s a very real threat that could make it challenging to earn a living on the Great Lakes. 

“We already have invasive species, pollution, climate change,” Taves said. “We don’t need this.”

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I’ve always liked potatoes. The variety I’m growing this summer is particularly special. With deep eyes and a knobby appearance, it’s certainly not the prettiest potato. And not everyone thinks it’s the most delicious. Its historical significance, however, is profound.

It’s called the Irish Lumper potato. The same variety that was hit by disease in 1845, initiating the Great Irish Potato Famine — a seven-year cataclysm which killed an estimated one million Irish people and spurred the emigration of another million. 

As a farmer and journalist with Irish heritage, I see the Lumper potato’s story as a chance to celebrate how far we’ve come in breeding more resilient crops and livestock. Most of us in Canada (though certainly not everyone) enjoy a level of food security unprecedented in human history. Crops with better genetics — greater resistance to insect pests, disease and drought — have been a major factor of this achievement. 

Now new, different tumultuous events are on the horizon, many driven by a changing and more volatile climate. I believe biotechnology can help us better weather this uncertain future, but it will require time, money and attention by governments and businesses. 

It will also require farmers and scientists to do a better job of discussing crop and animal science with a sometimes skeptical public, and all of us taking the risk of food insecurity more seriously. More made-in-Canada solutions addressing the unique conditions climate change will bring to this country and our dinner tables, would be a win for us all.

‘An Gorta Mór’: the Great Hunger

By the mid-19th century, poor Irish farmers and labourers were almost entirely dependent on the potato. The Irish Lumper was universally grown because it was highly productive, although some accounts say it was also more susceptible to certain diseases. 

One of those is a fungal blight called Phytophthora Infestans, or “infective plant destroyer.” After arriving on Ireland’s shores in 1845, the blight destroyed the Lumper’s foliage and rotted its tubers (the edible part of the crop). Starvation and disease quickly set in. The crisis deepened as prolonged cold and rainy weather allowed the pathogen to spread faster and relief schemes proved woefully inadequate. 

The period between 1845 and 1852 became known as “The Great Hunger,” an Gorta Mór in Irish. A branch of my paternal family emigrated to Canada from County Cork, one of the most afflicted areas, during the peak of the crisis. Their final resting place is a small churchyard not far from our current family farm in Essex County.

During a recent visit, I thought about the level of food insecurity they faced when Ireland’s over-reliance on the potato — a miracle crop in terms of productivity and nutrition — was combined with an uncaring government, extended periods of bad weather, overpopulation and chronic poverty. 

Phytophthora Infestans is still a problem for potato growers. We have tools to protect our crops now, though, including fungicides and better crop varieties. In 1998, for example, researchers with the United States Department of Agriculture developed a variety highly resistant to late blight, for use by public and private plant breeders. More recently, the American company Simplot used biotechnology (rather than traditional plant breeding) to produce three varieties with high resistance to multiple potato diseases.

What would my ancestors have given for the same?

Crop-breeding can be a climate change solution

The development of better crops is not a new story, of course. Humans have been breeding plants and animals for beneficial traits for millennia. 

But the last century has given us faster and more accurate ways to tinker. Mutagenesis — using radiation to mimic spontaneous mutation in the natural world — has been widely used. Transgenic technology (used to develop what are commonly called genetically modified organisms, or GMOs) can put beneficial genetics from one organism directly into the genome of another. Gene editing, the most recent scientific development, allows for highly precise changes within an organism’s existing genetic code.

The technological achievement underpinning it all is our ability to map an organism’s genetic code — to determine what genes are responsible for what traits. Knowing what gene is responsible for a tomato’s immunity to a specific insect pest, and breeding for it, could reduce insecticide use. Genetically improving gut health in cattle, sheep and goats could help reduce methane emissions. 

Not all of this knowledge is new, and incorporating the long-ignored traits found in Indigenous crop varieties could make modern varieties more resilient. I’ve come across several examples in recent years. Take Andean potatoes, which are far better at handling drought than today’s common commercial varieties. 

Drought is already a problem across much of Canada, and climate change could make it even more frequent and severe. This will strain water sources used for irrigating potatoes and other crops that need lots of water to grow. 

Many potato varieties native to the Andes, though, are hardier in dry conditions than many modern spuds. Researchers with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada have been analyzing the genomes of these Andean potato varieties to identify where their drought tolerance comes from, thus giving potato breeders more options. 

That’s just one example from a huge list of global public-sector initiatives supporting food system resilience in the face of climate change and other challenges. But for many crops, private sector research far surpasses knowledge production in the public sector. This has been used as a convenient excuse by governments in this country to reduce investment in public sector breeding programs.

Canada has also cut back on extension services — the research and outreach farmers rely on for independent advice, problem-solving expertise and new ideas. While I support innovation from the private sector, and appreciate how companies engage and support farmers like myself and my family, a healthy, resilient agricultural system must include a long-term vision at the federal level, and be supported by a rigorous network of impartial experts. 

Not only are there fewer public dollars flowing to crop development programs, but political blinders also make it more difficult for researchers to access what’s left. Successfully acquiring federal funding for agricultural projects, for example, now relies on the applicant proving their work will address very specific climate change and environmental goals, such as reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Crop breeding on its own is not seen as a means of achieving those goals, even though it certainly could contribute. Consider Sierra Mixe maize, a native corn from Mexico’s Oaxaca state that is related to the crops grown on my farm. 

While modern corn varieties are highly productive, they require a lot of expensive nitrogen fertilizer that can pollute waterways or enter the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas, if handled improperly or if the weather doesn’t cooperate when we need to apply it. 

Sierra Mixe, on the other hand, is able to trap and make use of atmospheric nitrogen by exuding a mucus from above-ground roots. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, and elsewhere, have been trying to incorporate the trait into modern commercial corn varieties. Doing so could help reduce our dependence on nitrogen fertilizer, lower fertilizer costs on the farm and potentially lower nitrogen-based greenhouse gas emissions. 

Even if a crop breeding project doesn’t directly set out to reduce emissions, that doesn’t mean it won’t have some positive effect. Legumes like beans and lentils, for example, naturally produce their own nitrogen by drawing it from the atmosphere and storing it in their roots. Developing more disease or drought -resistant beans and lentils would  allow farmers to grow more of these crops and reduce the amount of nitrogen used and released into the environment.

Crop breeding is a climate solution — and needs to be recognized as such.

Misinformation around biotechnology gets in the way of funding and advancement

There is still opposition to the use of gene editing and other biotechnologies in agriculture. Some of that opposition is rooted in perceived risks to the environment or traditionally bred crop varieties. Concern about corporate ownership is also a factor, but wariness of private enterprise patenting new crops, for example, doesn’t mean there is no role for gene editing in the public or academic sphere. 

And just like in the general public, perspectives within the farming community can differ.

However, much of the past and current discourse around biotechnology has been mired by politically motivated groups spreading misinformation. Public engagement and outreach efforts from scientists, farmers and others who support biotechnology have not always been effective in countering that misinformation. But as the climate crisis grows, Canada should not completely eschew investments in technological advances in plant and animal science — particularly when misinformation still abounds. 

I believe we would do well to embrace modern genomic technology for the revolution it is.

Traditional plant breeding has served humanity well, and will continue to do so. But new approaches (gene editing, in particular) significantly reduce the amount of time and treasure it takes to develop new organisms. 

I am not naive enough to think biotechnology will solve all our problems, just as it alone would surely not have prevented the Great Hunger. But dedication to crop and animal breeding, in whatever form you support, can certainly help us manage risks — if we get serious about making public investments, ensure those investment dollars are actually accessible and recognize the incredible potential afforded us by modern agricultural science.

I doubt my four-times great grandparents, who crossed an ocean amidst death and devastation at home, took food security for granted. We will serve future generations well if we, similarly, do not.

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For a couple of decades at the end of the last century, it seemed like the blue-green algae problem in Lake Erie had been solved, or at least managed, thanks to a concerted cross-border effort. The most southerly Great Lake garnered a bad environmental reputation throughout the 1960s and 1970s, when the lake, more than four times the size of Prince Edward Island, became covered in large, widespread nuisance algae blooms. The causes were many: phosphorus pollution from phosphate-laden detergents, nutrient-rich soil runoff from farmland and inadequate municipal wastewater facilities. 

The problem was particularly bad in the lake’s western basin, where warm, shallow waters encouraged eutrophication, or excessive growth of algae and plants, which blocked sunlight and consumed vast quantities of dissolved oxygen. The resulting damage to aquatic plant and animal populations was so bad the scientific community declared western Lake Erie “dead,” a catastrophe name-dropped in Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax:

“You’re glumping the pond where the Humming-Fish hum! 

No more can they hum, for their gills are all gummed! 

So I’m sending them off. Oh, their future is dreary.

They’ll walk on their fins and get woefully weary

in search of some water that isn’t so smeary.

I hear things are just as bad up in Lake Erie.”

Like the Lorax, Lake Erie’s story seemed to have a happy ending. Governments on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border and the international research community took action, focussing on phosphorus, the main driver of algae blooms. In 1978, an agreement was made to reduce total phosphorus loading into Lake Erie to 11,000 metric tons annually. 

In the years that followed, phosphates were removed from detergents. Municipal wastewater infrastructure was improved. In the countryside, farmers adopted production practices, such as no-till and minimum-till crop production, that disturbed soil less frequently, leaving it less vulnerable to wind and water erosion. The cumulative result was a recovering ecosystem, and the smallest Great Lake remained largely free of problem algae blooms for the next couple of decades. 

By the early 2000s, however, they returned. Today, algae blooms threaten both the lake’s ecosystem and drinking water in places like Toledo in Ohio, Ontario’s Pelee Island and other shoreline communities. The problem is worse than it used to be: even though the phosphorus limits are still in place, the algae is persistent and more toxic. 

The pollution is coming from multiple sources — it’s especially prevalent during big storms and snow melt — making it unclear exactly how nutrient-rich water is getting into local streams. But experts say the explosion of vegetable and cannabis greenhouses in southwestern Ontario poses a particularly significant threat.

According to a 2022 Statistics Canada report, the province is home to more than 60 per cent of the greenhouse area in Canada. Since 2016, the footprint of Ontario’s greenhouses has increased by more than 44 million square feet (or four million square metres), roughly the size of 2,500 hockey rinks. Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers says the industry it represents produces more than 500 million kilograms of vegetables. Statistics Canada also reports that in 2021, three years after the legalization of cannabis in the country, more than one million square metres in the province were dedicated to licensed greenhouse growing. 

The greenhouse proliferation can have dire consequences for the region if left unchecked, but Mayor Hilda MacDonald of Leamington, Ont., a greenhouse-heavy municipality just southeast of Windsor, says local municipalities have limited resources to investigate if operators are violating existing rules and few means of stopping those who are. 

MacDonald doesn’t mince words about her need for more help. She says the lack of action from the provincial government on a well-known and significant environmental problem is inexcusable. 

“Don’t tell me it’s just a few bad apples. Those bad apples are big bad apples and they’re ruining the whole bin,” MacDonald says. “We’re holding [the Environment Ministry’s] feet to the fire. They’re the ones who have fallen down on the job. Testing? That’s their job. Where the hell are they?”

As the footprint of the multi-billion-dollar greenhouse vegetable and cannabis sectors in southwestern Ontario’s Windsor Essex region increases, the provincial Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks — the government department that could affect immediate change — remains largely absent. Its public list of fines levied after environmental violations goes back to May 2019: in that time, only a small handful of convictions appear to concern the management of nutrients, stormwater or effluent water in the Windsor Essex region. 

The highest was $62,500 in fines handed out to Kapital Produce in Windsor, Ont., in April 2022 for mixing greenhouse water and stormwater. The ministry’s court bulletin says the levels of phosphorus were up to 40 times higher than the limit of 0.5 milligrams per litre specified in the company’s environmental compliance approval, a permit required to operate.

The ministry site listed just three other convictions in the region since 2019, resulting in a fine of $6,500 handed out to Cielo Vista Farms for not maintaining proper logs of stormwater pond inspections; $31,250 charged to Golden Acres Farms for having over-limit phosphorus levels in a stormwater collection pond that discharges into a drain that leads to Lake Erie; and $50,000 imposed on Nature Fresh Farms for allowing greenhouse water to flow into Leamington’s Bailey Drain. All of the convictions listed on the ministry site were at operations that grow vegetables, not cannabis. 

The Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks did not respond to questions from The Narwhal. 

Different algae, mysterious sources: nutrient loss from farmland a complex problem

One confusing aspect of the algae’s return is that the 1978 phosphorus limit is still in place. “The loads are still meeting that 11,000 metric tons. We haven’t gone over that,” Katie Stammler, water quality scientist and source water protection project manager with the Essex Region Conservation Authority, tells The Narwhal. “Something obviously changed in the lake itself.”  

Climate change and slightly warmer temperatures are likely a factor in the lake’s reversal of fortunes. The impact of invasive species may be another. And from a farming perspective, the move toward practices that reduce erosion had unforeseen impacts. While less soil disturbance means less sediment-bound phosphorus enters waterways directly from farm fields, it also means more water-soluble phosphorus — phosphorus dissolved in water — slips through field drains and drainage tile.

The blooms themselves are also changing. Algae blooms used to be caused by diatoms — a non-toxic type of algae — but are now increasingly caused by toxic microcystis algae. “What we’re finding out now is [microcystis algae is] an opportunistic species globally, anywhere there’s disturbance. … They like the warmer temperatures, they’re rising as diatoms are falling,” Stammler says.

The final analysis, she says, is Lake Erie “can’t handle the amount of phosphorus that we thought that it could, and now we have to give it less.” 

“So, we have to evolve the science and say ‘What is the difference now and how much phosphorus can the system take now?’ ” Stammler says. “What is the type of phosphorus it can take?” 

As algae reappeared at the turn of the millennium, water quality researchers began noticing additional worrying trends in Essex County waterways with significant greenhouse footprints. First, there was a jump in baseline nutrient loading in waterways such as Sturgeon Creek, which runs through an area with a high concentration of greenhouses. 

Essex County’s greenhouse footprint tripled between 2000 and 2020, with significant growth occurring in Leamington, the site of Sturgeon Creek and nearby Lebo Drain. As the years progressed, so did the amount of nutrient pollution. The Environment Ministry investigated, releasing a 2012 report with damning conclusions. 

Of 32 outfall locations at different greenhouses, 21 were found to have high levels of nitrates or phosphorus — indicative of nutrient water or process water from greenhouse production getting into municipal streams. Sturgeon Creek was found to have phosphorus concentrations nearing seven milligrams per litre, or a level Stammler calls “gross.” The provincial limit for a healthy waterway is 0.03 milligrams per litre. Nearby Lebo Drain was not much better. 

The 2012 report categorized Sturgeon Creek and Lebo Drain as “the most polluted in the province of Ontario with respect to phosphorus and nitrate.” It concluded the ministry could not support further greenhouse development in either watershed “without appropriate treatment technology in place.”

Yet greenhouse development continued to explode across the region. The number of hectares under glass and plastic has continued to grow since 2020, now spilling into adjoining municipalities. 

The nutrient-loading problem, similarly, has only become more acute. An August 2023 report by Stammler and her colleagues at the Essex Region Conservation Authority shows phosphorus loading in Leamington tributaries now ranges from 2.9 to 6.0 milligrams per litre, or 100 to 200 times higher than the provincial target. 

With over a decade of collected data, the report found “year over year, nutrient concentrations continue to be strikingly higher in greenhouse streams than non-greenhouse streams.” 

“With greenhouse agriculture continuing to expand in this area, and elsewhere in the Great Lakes Basin, it is essential that we take heed of this canary in the coal mine,” the report reads. 

Stammler says what’s most concerning is the apparent significant leakage stemming from what should be totally enclosed, state-of-the-art, brand-new greenhouse constructions. 

Greenhouse water management is not the Wild West. Regulations around the disposal of effluent water — water used in the production of crops — do exist, at least on paper. Many growers also operate on entirely closed systems, where water and nutrients are continually reused.

Area farmers The Narwhal spoke with were not comfortable going on the record. One was H., a Leamington-area greenhouse vegetable grower who operates the type of closed system meant to keep nutrients out of waterways. 

H. said Ontario’s Environment Ministry requires regular testing of his farm’s water systems, which recycle as much water as possible in order to trap and reuse nutrients. The ministry also inspects his stormwater retention ponds, which collect rainwater from greenhouse roofs. No nutrients from his vegetable production system mix with stormwater.

“We test our ponds monthly and keep that data on hand,” H. says. “We put other stewardship programs in too. We hired someone twice to come in, plug our drains and make sure none of our nutrients are getting into our ponds. … We’re a totally closed system. It’s not like I have a valve I can open.”

H. participated in a University of Windsor research project determining the best way to turn retention ponds from nutrient sources into effective nutrient sinks. The project was supported by Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers, the marketing board representing the greenhouse vegetable industry.

“Ponds can be a sink or a source of nutrients because of all the biological activity that goes on within the pond. Almost the best thing you can do is try to turn the pond into a wetland so you’re dealing with the nutrients on site,” H. says. The idea is to recreate nature’s filtration power by making otherwise vegetation-free stormwater ponds resemble native wetlands. “A lot of times the easiest solutions have already been created by nature. … Instead of clear-cutting 50 acres of cattails, for example, maybe we should just leave them.”

“One of the biggest things we deal with is nitrogen. When you test the ponds, you’ll get different nitrogen levels depending on the depth. Sometimes it even matters the direction of the wind, and how that water is moving in that retention pond,” H. says. “We’re on a good path. But I can’t tell you where the nutrients are coming from because, right now, I don’t know. We’re on a closed system.”

H. wonders if today’s high nutrient levels in Lake Erie are due to less sophisticated practices in years past. “Those ponds, 25 or 30 years ago when they weren’t recirculating nutrients, they probably were dumped in then,” he says. 

As the Ontario government pushes for fast residential development across the southern part of the province, H. worries about the stress of increased urbanization adding to the effects of agriculture on ecologically important areas. The more wetlands lost, he says, the harder it is for the overall system to function, whether or not individual farms are handling nutrients properly.

Mayor, researchers and vegetable industry disagree about effect of greenhouses, but agree Ontario needs to act on Lake Erie

H. expresses frustration at the area’s large greenhouse cannabis sector — an industry he believes may be a significant source of pollution, but that flies under the radar while vegetable growers deal with the fallout. Stammler says it’s “a mystery” how large of an effect cannabis greenhouses might be playing on Lake Erie’s algae. “I don’t think they have an overarching body like greenhouse vegetable growers, so my understanding is that it’s kind of the Wild West,” she says. 

The Ontario Cannabis Association didn’t respond to The Narwhal’s questions about whether its members discuss the nutrient issue among themselves or with the government, while a spokesperson for the Cannabis Council of Canada replied he wasn’t sure, saying individual growers would have to be consulted. Richard Lee, executive director of Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers, didn’t want to speak for the newly legal crop, writing in an email “cannabis growers will have to speak to their own practices, the greenhouse sector is not monolithic.” Lee added it’s important to distinguish between licensed cannabis operators and those on the “black and grey market,” since non-licensed operators’ “growing practices remain unaudited and there are no oversight bodies governing their day-to-day operations.” 

Since Statistics Canada’s data on cannabis greenhouse farms only includes licensed growers, it’s unclear how big the unlicensed industry might be. But Jason Venkiteswaran, an associate professor in the geography and environmental studies department at Wilfrid Laurier University, tells The Narwhal it’s unlikely the growth in Ontario’s cannabis greenhouses since legalization have had a significant effect on Lake Erie’s algae blooms.“Bloom severity varies from year to year,” Venkiteswaran wrote in an email, but 2023 data from the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science doesn’t show significantly different algae blooms in 2019, 2020, 2021 or 2023 than in the previous decade. Venkiteswaran, whose work focuses on algae blooms and carbon in small lakes, points out the blooms’ maximum severity is at the mouth of the Maumee and Sandusky rivers, which flow out of highly populated Ohio. 

“It’s difficult to see how cannabis greenhouses would be a significant enough source of phosphorus to Lake Erie to change the year to year bloom size and intensity,” he wrote. 

Environment Ministry has yet to commit funds for needed sewer line

Mayor MacDonald, who is also the warden of Essex County, believes bad actors are indeed present. 

The relationship between the municipality and the area’s greenhouse industries is often adversarial, she says, with a number of significant issues — such as excessive light pollution, infrastructure damage from greenhouse truck and equipment traffic and illegal waste disposal — either going unaddressed or taking forever to make it through the legal process. While municipalities technically approve greenhouses, it’s hard to justify rejecting applications to build them, particularly because greenhouses, regardless of size, are classified the same as bare farmland from a zoning perspective. 

Despite his own efforts to ensure his water system is closed, H. says it is possible some greenhouse operators are doing what they can get away with, rather than what they should — especially if the only recourse is a slap on the wrist. 

But Lee, of Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers, is more skeptical. “Greenhouse operators live in the community and in the watersheds,” he says in an email. “Every drop of nutrient not fed to a plant is wasted revenue and no reasonable person would willfully release nutrients.”

What Lee and the mayor agree on, though, is that upper levels of government need to help. Leamington has been asking the provincial and federal governments to invest in reducing the risk of nutrient pollution for over a decade. Eight years ago, MacDonald says, Leamington asked for funding for a sewer line to carry effluent water and sewage from an exploding office sector through one of the most greenhouse-heavy areas of the county. 

Back then, MacDonald says, the cost estimate was $80 million. Now, it is over $120 million. MacDonald says Leamington can afford to contribute $30 million for a project that benefits one industry, in one area.

MacDonald says despite multiple consultations, the Environment Ministry hasn’t committed any funding for the sewer line. Neither have any other provincial ministries, such as Infrastructure, Agriculture and Municipal Affairs and Housing. Federally, the municipality spoke “on a casual level” with ministries of Environment and Infrastructure. 

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the Ministry of Finance deferred The Narwhal’s questions about the sewer line to the Environment Ministry which, along with the Ministry of Infrastructure, did not respond. 

“We hit every ministry we could think of,” MacDonald says, adding the conversations took place during both her administration and that of her predecessor.  

Lee said his organization has talked to “the Ministry of Infrastructure, Ministry of Finance and other key ministries to bring awareness for the need for a more robust infrastructure to support agriculture across Ontario, but more specifically in the southwestern region where we have experienced hyper growth in a relatively short time.” 

That includes the sewer line, what he calls “one solution to addressing nutrient latent water but comes at a significant cost to the town and rate payer. … We remain in contact with all parties to move the project forward for the benefit of all stakeholders.” 

From MacDonald’s perspective, the provincial Environment Ministry should be conducting more regular, randomized water quality tests, as well as infrastructure site checks of greenhouses and site plans. Generally, she wants help to make it more difficult to discreetly release effluent water in an unapproved way.  

“Our water intake is in the lake. If that water intake gets shut down, not only will the people not be able to have drinking water, but [greenhouses] won’t either,” she says, which could “shut the industry down. There has to be something done, but we’ve heard nothing but crickets from the upper levels for eight, nine years.”

Stammler agrees, saying the Environment Ministry has the right tools and enforcement capability to home in on polluters — it’s just not using it. Further investigation by the ministry could help narrow down exactly where within a given watershed increases in nutrient concentrations are occurring, and subsequently, who is causing them. 

“In my experience, no matter how much evidence there is, people will always try to say it’s not them or it’s not true,” Stammler says. “In this case, we are showing that there is a watershed-scale problem in watersheds where there are greenhouses, and not in similar watersheds without greenhouses. We don’t know how it’s happening, but we know that it is.” 

With files from Denise Balkissoon.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

My family has been farming the flat, prairie-like expanses of Essex County, Ont., for six generations. Our home area, and the archipelago of islands in Lake Erie’s western basin, comprise the southernmost point of Canada’s only Carolinian zone, a biologically rich but ecologically fragile region. The county used to be covered in woodlands, wetlands and grasslands, with an immense variety of wildlife and plant species. But forests and other natural spaces disappeared over the last two centuries, losing out to urban development as well as agriculture and farmers — people like me.

Most of that agricultural clearing happened in bits and pieces over the 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, many farmers can see what we’ve lost. The disappearance of upland game bird species such as the rough grouse and declining numbers of species at risk highlight biodiversity loss. The conversion of land with high water-holding capacity to fields and pavement has affected water flow, putting pressure on drainage infrastructure and increasing flood risk. 

Many of us are worried about the effects of climate change on our lives and livelihoods. And we’d like to make positive changes by expanding existing woodlands, wetlands, fencerows — the lines of trees, bushes and other plants that divide field boundaries — and other ecologically sensitive areas on our land. 

It’s not a simple thing to do, though, and sometimes farmers have legitimate reasons for not planting more trees. Turning the tide necessitates understanding what got us here in the first place — and what forces continue to put pressure on landscapes. Only then can we understand the support farmers need to slow, stop and reverse the loss. 

Then and now, Ontario’s trees fall when times are tough 

My granddad was a passionate outdoorsman, and I often heard him lament the loss of upland bird populations as woodlots shrunk and fencerows disappeared through the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Well before him came the conservationist Jack Miner, who detailed his early life working and hunting in areas I know in his autobiography, Wild Goose Jack. His descriptions of the late 1870s and 1880s highlight a landscape only partially cleared of trees. 

“I wish all the people of America could have a genuine aerial view of our little seven-acre cavity in the woods,” Miner wrote about his family’s recently cleared Canadian homestead. Other lines include “this township and county were simply crowded with game.” Things progressed from there.

There’s no single reason why the area’s farmers started cutting all the trees down. They might have been driven by government policy requiring settlers to clear land before ownership was awarded. Some had strong cultural beliefs about land improvement, while others were coping with hard economic realities for their often very poor farm families. More fields mean more food and more sellable products, after all, and that matters when times are tough. 

And while much has changed in farming since the 19th century, economics continues to pressure both farmers and the ecosystems they inhabit. 

It’s the reason grain farming and other field crops dominate rural Essex County today. Although livestock can be quite supportive of natural landscapes — native insect and bird species can thrive in healthy grazing pastures, for example — they are largely absent from farms around here. Once common, mixed farms — those raising livestock and growing crops simultaneously — are less common here than in other, hillier, regions, where it’s less efficient to grow field crops. In flat Essex County, mixed farms disappeared as farmers specialized in crops, pushed by an ever-greater drive for efficiency. This also spurred landowners to continue cutting down trees — though at that point most of the area was already cleared or drained.

Farming is a very capital-intensive business. It’s also very unpredictable. Weather and seasonal changes, crop values and the cost of fuel, fertilizer and other materials — it can all change on a dime. The incredibly high cost of land and equipment add another layer to the problem, particularly for younger farmers or those who are very highly leveraged.

Fencerows can make it more difficult to operate machinery, particularly when that machinery is quite large. In dry conditions, the roots of established trees can absorb what limited moisture exists in the soil, resulting in stunted, lower-yielding crops in the immediate vicinity. Tree roots can also damage drainage tiles used to remove excess water from fields — but removing vegetation particularly along creeks, drainage ditches or other vulnerable watercourses, can increase the risk of soil erosion. Other factors, such as the municipal habit of dredging and clear-cutting vegetation around ditches, doesn’t exactly inspire landowners to make long-term investments in field edges along such waterways. 

Some of this may sound trivial, but I can say from experience, you can definitely tell how large a tree’s root system is in a dry year. Removing a fencerow between two adjoining fields can improve operational efficiency. It may not be what we want to do, but it does help when money and time are limited. 

At the end of the day, letting productive land revert to wetland or woods isn’t likely to pay the bills. Every metre of ground — and usually many thousands of dollars of income from an off-farm job — is needed to keep things running.

Creativity and support is needed to help Ontario farmers renaturalize their land

Revitalizing the land in Essex County will take more than just encouraging or even mandating landowners to plant a few trees. Many farmers are genuinely interested in ecological restoration. They’re just not in a position to do so, don’t know what options are available or lack support to make positive change. 

Programs do exist to help farmers establish natural landscapes but they only go so far. The charity Alternative Land Use Services helps renaturalize farmland, but focuses on areas that are already not agriculturally productive, such as places that are hard to reach with farm equipment or perpetually water-logged gullies. Conservation authorities can help landowners plant trees, but maintaining long-term programs and support is hard when provincial funding frequently dries up.

We need a different approach, and I’ve seen examples of successful policies and programs. While in Ireland this past March, I visited a beef farmer in West County Clare to learn about a very unique ancient cattle production system called “Burren winterage.” This system involves grazing cattle on mountaintops through the winter, and is critical to maintaining the biodiversity of Ireland’s renowned Burren region. 

However, in recent decades the winterage system was threatened by misguided food production policy. Local farmers and ecologists helped save it, presenting the national and European governments with evidence of the system’s environmental merit, and succeeding in securing payment programs to help farmers revert the landscape back to winterage practices. Environmental researchers also established the Burrenbeo Trust, a charity to support community interest in the region’s landscape, as well as conservation efforts. 

What would work in southwestern Ontario remains to be seen. Could a well-funded, long-term carbon credit system make expanding buffer strips, fencerows and woodlot expansion financially viable? Could municipalities figure out how to do better landscape maintenance where public and private property lines meet, then pay farmers to take this work on? What about a friendly, compensation-based competition for the most biodiverse fencerow? That could foster community bonds, while better enabling a culture of conservation. 

What is clear is the need for creativity. As someone who works the land, fishes the lakes and hunts the remaining woods, I see a lot of potential for farmers to make a difference. 

It’s my hope the seventh generation on this family farm sees more Carolinian wildness, not less. With the right mindset, resources and support, I’m convinced it is possible to combine high-efficiency production with ecological restoration in Ontario’s southwest. 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.