Summary

• The Department of National Defence and City of North Bay have been working to clean up decades-old per- and polyfluoroalkyl, or PFAS, contamination, first announced to the public in 2017. 
• Residents have proposed a class-action lawsuit over the contamination and consequent loss of property value — though environmental and health hazards of the contamination aren’t a part of the case.
• An international company called Industrial Plastics Canada is among the 10 major importers of a Teflon-like subgroup of PFAS to Canada, and they opened a factory in North Bay in 2023.

Gathered in an arena in North Bay, Ont., in summer 2024, federal officials told hundreds of concerned citizens how they planned to remediate longstanding contamination of the city’s waterways left behind by the Department of National Defence. A few months later, officials gave a similar presentation to a packed hotel conference room.

For nearly a decade now, residents have known about the contamination. Some have been told not to drink the water from their own wells, and everyone in the city has been warned not to drink water or eat fish from a creek outside town.

The creek is part of a system of waterways where carcinogenic “forever chemicals” run downstream from a military base, emptying into Trout Lake, the source of the city’s drinking water. It sits at nearly double Health Canada’s guideline for PFAS in drinking water, measured in nanograms per litre. 

Health Canada published an “objective” level of 30 nanograms per litre in August 2024 for 25 chemicals in the PFAS family. That’s less than half of what Ontario currently recommends: 70 nanograms per litre, pertaining to just 11 PFAS chemicals. And that’s just a suggestion, not a binding regulation. 

The city did not reply to The Narwhal’s detailed questions regarding the current state of the drinking water supply, but CBC reported in February 2026 that Trout Lake contained around 58 nanograms of PFAS per litre of water.  

Thousands of substances classified as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, are used to make everything from medical equipment to waterproof clothing. They can generate hazardous waste which, if not disposed of carefully, contaminates air, water and soil — where it can remain for 1,000 years, hence their other nickname, “forever chemicals.”

Statistics Canada reports almost all Canadians already have PFAS in their bodies, including in remote regions such as the Arctic and subarctic. 

In North Bay, the issue is top of mind, with a class-action lawsuit, a lengthy and expensive remediation plan and a new factory importing chemicals from the Teflon-like subgroup of PFAS, called PTFE. And the company behind that factory, Industrial Plastics Canada, is one of the 10 major importers of PTFE in Canada.

While PFAS have been making global headlines for years as an emerging threat to the environment and our bodies, North Bay knows the issue intimately; citizens fear for their water as politicians try to clean up the mess.

Here’s everything you need to know about PFAS in North Bay.

1. North Bay’s PFAS contamination comes from firefighting foam 

From the early 1970s to the mid-1990s, the Department of National Defence used a fire suppression foam containing PFAS to train firefighters across Canada, including near the North Bay Jack Garland Airport. In 2016, after the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit learned PFAS had been identified by the Department of National Defence in waterways around the city, it commissioned consulting firm Stantec to assess the impacts on soil and groundwater.

It’s the invisible nature of these chemicals that are part of what makes them so insidious; you can’t see them or smell them, so you don’t know they’re there without testing. 

“When you look at a mine, for example, you can see it and say, ‘That’s obviously disruptive to our ecosystem.’” North Bay-based environmental anthropologist Carly Dokis previously told The Narwhal. “But these things are invisible pollutants, which then tend to attract less public awareness.”

Stantec found PFAS from the foam had contaminated soil, bedrock, groundwater, private wells and several waterways in the region including Trout Lake, Lake Nipissing and Lees, Dorlan, Chippewa and La Vase creeks and surrounding areas.

In 2025, reporting by the Investigative Journalism Bureau surfaced a report by the Royal Military College showing the Department of National Defence found elevated PFAS levels around the base as far back as 2012. That means the department knew about the contamination for five years before revealing it to the City of North Bay in 2016, and the public in 2017.

2.  PFAS impacts health, environment and property values. Residents are seeking recompense

In late 2025, North Bay citizens filed a proposed class-action lawsuit asking for remediation, safe drinking water and $105 million in damages for residents living within a three-kilometre radius of the 22 Wing Canadian Forces Base and Jack Garland Airport. Some of the people who live closest to the contamination have been receiving bottled water from the government for years, but have had no other opportunity for recourse.

The proposed lawsuit, if certified by the court, would be against the City of North Bay and the Attorney General of Canada, on behalf of the Department of National Defence, focusing on the loss of property value and remediation costs. The case is also seeking punitive damages, contending that National Defence was aware of the contamination long before warning residents.

Not mentioned in the suit is the long list of health concerns associated with “forever chemicals.”

The United States Environmental Protection Agency lists potential health risks of exposure to PFAS, including reproductive problems like infertility, developmental effects in children, increased risk of certain cancers and weakening of the body’s immune system, including reduced vaccine response. The Canadian government says PFAS can be transferred through the placenta during pregnancy, and infants can be exposed through human milk. 

Ecosystems are affected, too. Studies have shown exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances can stunt plant growth and cause reduced seed germination and ability to photosynthesize. The chemicals can build up in the organs of living creatures throughout the food chain. In the district of Nipissing, that poses a risk to people who hunt, fish and harvest from the land.

“These industrial areas are often surrounded by lower-income buildings and peoples and communities,” Curtis Avery, environment department manager with Nipissing First Nation, told The Narwhal in summer 2023. “We’re the most vulnerable group of people that utilize our lands — the lands are our grocery stores. … If these are being impacted, we need to know.”

3. Cost of North Bay clean-up grew five-fold, to more than $100 million

In 2021, the City of North Bay announced plans to begin remediation under a “shared responsibility” agreement between the Department of National Defence and the city. The federal department would cover 97 per cent of the costs, or $19.4 million, and the city would cover the remaining three per cent, at $600,000. But costs have ballooned since then; in December 2025, National Defence announced it would contribute another nearly $100 million to the remediation, with the city’s share rising to more than $3.6 million. The total for the cleanup project has risen to more than $122 million.

The remediation, which began on the ground in 2024, includes excavating and disposing of about 26,000 tonnes of PFAS-impacted soil; injecting activated carbon material into particularly dense patches of PFAS to stop the underground plume from spreading; and installing a filtration system to treat water leaving the site.

“We remain committed to addressing and managing the operational legacy of the Canadian Armed Forces responsibly,” Minister of National Defence David J. McGuinty said in a news release.

As part of the process, a notice went up on the federal Impact Assessment Agency registry on April 28, inviting the public to comment up until June 5 on a proposal to install a 250-metre permeable barrier in the ground to help filter impacted groundwater. A spokesperson for the agency said its role in the project is to offer advice on determining its environmental effects, as well as providing the opportunity to post the project on the registry.

Local organizations, including the environmental group Northwatch, said in a press release that they were concerned about “very limited public engagement over the last ten years since the public disclosure of the contamination,” counting only the two forums in 2024 and 2025, where there was “limited opportunities for the public to ask questions.” 

Northwatch’s project coordinator Brennain Lloyd told The Narwhal about the public notice period, which she said her organization only learned of in a daily bulletin from the Impact Assessment Agency listing multiple assessment notices from across the country.

“To the best of our knowledge there were no local announcements or invitations to comment issued to the many residents and organizations who have identified their interest in this program,” a release from Northwatch reads.

The Department of National Defence did not respond to questions from The Narwhal. 

4. North Bay’s not alone: contaminated military bases affect communities across Canada

Contamination on federal sites is an issue across Canada. There are thousands of contaminated sites listed on the federal contaminated sites inventory, and PFAS are found on more than 100 of them. These include at least 26 National Defence sites including bases in Trenton, Ont., Gagetown, N.B., and Moose Jaw, Sask.

And contaminants don’t stop at the fenceline. Health Canada says some contaminants can travel long distances through soil, water and air: “PFAS can be found in fresh water and drinking water in areas that are far away from where they entered the environment,” according to the department’s website.

5. Industry is still importing PFAS-class chemicals into North Bay

While the Canadian government no longer uses firefighting foam that contains PFAS, industry continues to bring these substances into the country. In 2023, The Narwhal reported on an international plastics conglomerate that opened its first Canadian location, Industrial Plastics Canada, in North Bay. The company has a presence across Europe as well as in India and China, billing itself as one of the “largest worldwide manufacturers of PTFE products.” 

PTFE, or polytetrafluoroethylene, is a Teflon-like product in a subgroup of PFAS known as fluoropolymers, or fluoroplastics. A company spokesperson previously told The Narwhal the use of PTFE at the factory will not produce waste and poses “no risk.” The company also says fluoropolymers aren’t as dangerous as other PFAS and are “considered safe, non-bioaccumulative and non-toxic.” 

But fluoropolymers have been found to be dangerous to human health, according to research published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology and others.

In 2023, Health Canada released a draft assessment of the state of PFAS in Canada to help decide how to regulate the class of chemicals. In it, the agency cited an industry-funded study that said fluoropolymers should be considered separately from other PFAS as “polymers of low concern.” A Health Canada spokesperson said the agency, along with Environment and Climate Change Canada, “examined information from a wide range of sources,” including scientific journals and reports while preparing the state of PFAS report.

The substances were ultimately excluded from the final report, released in March 2025, in which Health Canada proposed classifying the remaining PFAS chemicals as toxic substances under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

The Health Canada spokesperson said in an email that fluoropolymers “have specific properties that differentiates them from other PFAS,” which led to their exclusion from the final report. They added that the exclusion “should not be interpreted as meaning they are or are not of concern,” and that a separate fluoropolymer assessment is currently underway.

The exclusion of PTFE from that classification was a major priority for industry, Rémy Alexandre, toxics project lead at environmental law non-profit EcoJustice, told The Narwhal.

According to data collected by Alexandre, who studied Industrial Plastics Canada’s imports to North Bay, the company brought in almost 207,000 kilograms of PTFE from India and China from July 2025 to May 2026.

This puts the facility on the list of the 10 major importers of PTFE in Canada, alongside U.S.-based chemicals company Chemours, a spinoff of Dupont that has been arguing that the European Union should exempt fluoropolymers from their regulations, too. 

“The decision to site this plant in a community that is an existing hotspot for PFAS raises concerns,” Alexandre told The Narwhal. “And so does the selection of a jurisdiction that isn’t regulating fluoropolymers.”

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Summary

• Tick populations are spreading in Ontario, increasing the risk of Lyme disease.
• Of the 44 varieties of ticks found in the province, only one — blacklegged ticks — carry Lyme, but they make up more than half of all ticks here.
• Experts say people need to recognize the risk of ticks and Lyme in the outdoors, and check themselves and others.

With the kids in bed and the movie credits rolling, I turned to my partner and asked the question no man can resist: would you check me for ticks? We’d been out in the backyard most of the day, among a not-so-recently mowed lawn, shrubs and tall native grasses. They all could be harbouring any number of pests — including the one adding an extra element of terror to southern Ontario summers. Wildfire smoke? Check. Extreme heat? Check. Ticks? Check — no, really: check yourself for ticks.

The insects have been spreading across Canada as the climate changes, and southern Ontario has seen a dramatic increase among several species of ticks. Unfun fact: our province has 44 species in total, according to Public Health Ontario. But only one, the blacklegged tick, carries Lyme disease (we’ll get to that in a minute).

Ticks have been on the rise in Canada for the better part of the last decade, Manisha Kulkarni, a professor in University of Ottawa’s School of Epidemiology and Public Health, says.

“What we’re really seeing is the result of this multi-year trend of tick population expansion in North America,” she says. “And now we’re really seeing those populations establishing in more regions in southern parts of Canada, including in Ontario.”

With warmer weather, ticks in Ontario are spreading

There are a few factors encouraging the tick’s northward march, Kulkarni says, but “one of the main drivers is climate change.”

“We’re not seeing as cold winters that would normally prevent them from surviving and reproducing, so they’re able to survive in more regions,” she adds. 

That longer warm season allows more time for ticks to find hosts — like us — to feed on, and to reproduce. As a result, every year we’re seeing populations establish in new areas that now have desirable conditions for ticks.

So while my family in the Niagara region has been dealing with ticks every spring and summer for years, this summer they’ve become a shared foe within the family chat. The latest map from Ontario Public Health shows populations of blacklegged ticks as far north as Thunder Bay and Kenora, throughout the Ottawa Valley and in Owen Sound, on Lake Huron.

I’ve heard a few people seek a silver lining on the coldest days of winter, saying that at least long stretches of deep freeze will decrease the risks of ticks. They were — officially — wrong.

While we did have some bitingly cold temperatures in Ontario this winter, Kulkarni says, “We also had lots of snow, which is a great insulator.” Ticks burrow down in the leaf litter, blanketed by snow, and stay cozy even when we’re complaining about a stretch of -30 C days.

So depending on where you live, it might be time to draw the blinds, strip down … and turn on the lights.

How to check for ticks (or stop them before they get to you)

How exactly should you check yourself and loved ones for ticks? Cover as much surface area as possible, according to Health Canada. Check your chest and back, and in your hair — and don’t forget the crevices: armpits (and kneepits!), belly button and between your toes. Ticks also have a habit of going for the groin so … yeah.

To prevent ticks from reaching your skin in the first place, Health Canada suggests closed-toed shoes, long sleeves and pants — with your shirt tucked into your pants and your pants tucked into your socks. Ten minutes in a hot dryer will take care of any that hitched a ride on your clothes. 

Sticking to cleared paths and trails helps, too. 

And there may be ways to keep ticks away, more broadly, from outdoor spaces humans like to frequent. Kulkarni’s team at University of Ottawa recently released a study that found spreading wood chips at the edges of gardens and trails where ticks are prevalent effectively reduced the number that came looking for blood. 

How did they test that? Dragging a piece of flannel material across the ground before and after wood chips were laid to see how many latched on. It really tells you something about how easily ticks attach, doesn’t it?

Why do so many Canadian musicians have Lyme disease? Blame the deer

As ticks take on new territory, their presence isn’t just creepy and unwelcome, it’s actually a public health risk: ask Justin Bieber, Avril Lavigne or Shania Twain.

They’ve all publicly announced their diagnoses of the disease that, if left untreated, can cause neurological and cardiac issues, as well as arthritis.

Some areas of the country and our province, particularly around Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, have a higher concentration of ticks carrying bacteria that cause Lyme disease. Though it’s the most common disease people get from ticks, Lyme isn’t the only one they carry. And while not all types of ticks can pass on Lyme disease, more than half of the ticks found in Ontario are of the blacklegged variety that can, according to Public Health Ontario’s recent report. 

How does it happen, you ask? After mating on the backs of deer, the female blacklegged tick drops to the ground and, in the spring, lays eggs among the leaf litter, Kulkarni explains. Those eggs hatch into larvae, which quickly go looking for their first drink of blood. Down among the leaves, that’s usually from a small animal like a mouse or bird. If that animal is infected with the bacteria that causes Lyme, the tick takes on the infection. When it’s larger and more active, in the nymphal stage, the tick will find a bigger animal or human to feed on, and pass that infection on to them. As they mature into adults, white-tailed deer, dogs and humans are all on the menu.

“There’s several points in the cycle where humans are susceptible, but that tends to be during the nymphal peak of activity, in kind of the late spring and summer months, and then the adults, which are in the early spring and in the fall,” Kulkarni says.

For a general rule of where there might be a risk of ticks, consider if it’s a place populated by white-tailed deer, Kulkarni says.

Lyme disease diagnosis is up, so pull your pants down. But what do you do if you find one?

Across Canada, diagnoses of Lyme disease have skyrocketed from 104 cases in 2009 to a preliminary count of 7,105 cases in 2025, though the increase is likely due to awareness and increased testing, as well as a rise in cases. So far this year in Ontario, 236 cases have been identified by Public Health Ontario.

If you can remove the tick within a day, you can spare yourself a lot of trouble — it typically takes more than 24 hours after it attaches for the tick to pass on the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. Properly removing it means pulling the tick out straight, rather than twisting or bending, which risks leaving some of its mouthparts (unfortunately, that is the proper anatomical term) embedded. 

Next up? Keep the tick. Put that little sucker into a sealed container and take it to your doctor for testing (they’ll be thrilled). And if you can’t wait to know whether you’re holding a little blacklegged tick hostage — the kind that carries Lyme — you can also submit photos of the little offender online, where it will be quickly identified by kind-hearted insect enthusiasts.

If you have been bit, or even suspect you may have been, look out for Lyme symptoms like a rash or fever, headache or joint pain, Kulkarni says. These can occur even without the most famous Lyme symptom: a bullseye rash around the bite. “Not everybody actually gets the rash, so it’s important to look out for those other symptoms,” she says. If you have a summer fever, she adds, “that’s a good indication you should get checked out for Lyme, especially if you’ve been in an area where ticks are present.”

It’s not about being afraid to go outside, she adds, but equipping yourself with knowledge: both of the level of risk for ticks and Lyme wherever you’re going (there’s a map for that!) and how to properly remove one of it digs in (there are kits for that — and tweezers work, too!).

Kulkarni likens the threat of ticks to another unpleasant natural hazard. “There are settings where we know there’s poison ivy. People don’t go off the trail because they might brush along it, and if they do get a rash, they know what to do, right?,” she says. “Tick bites can be a bit more serious than that, but it’s the same concept: that being out in nature isn’t without risks, but by knowing what the risks are and how to manage them, you can really reduce any potential impacts.”

So check yourself, your kids, your pets — and your friends, if they need it. And if you’ve got a special someone at home, why not make 2026 the summer of sexy tick checks?

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.

Summary

• The North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit officially stopped testing water at public beaches.
• In place of testing, the health unit is updating public signage to warn swimmers of risks of heavy rainfall, murky water and large numbers of birds congregating — things that deteriorate water quality.
• Researchers and advocates argue beach water monitoring is important, especially as climate change makes cooling off in the water more necessary — and more hazardous, thanks to algal blooms and pathogens.

Kevin Marois wasn’t aware that the health unit spanning North Bay and Parry Sound, Ont., had stopped testing the water at local swimming spots.“I don’t think it’s a good decision,” Marois told The Narwhal after learning about it on a hot June day at Shabogesic Beach in North Bay. “Not having the information on water quality is the main [concern],” he said as he came out of the water, “And we know that there are problems with water quality during the summer.”

There were six harmful algal bloom events in the health unit’s area in 2025, and more than a dozen in 2024.

After announcing its plans earlier this year, the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit has officially stopped testing water at public beaches as of this summer. 

In its place, they’re offering public signage, which the health unit says will warn beachgoers to assess risks from recent heavy rainfall, visibly murky water or large numbers of birds in the water — all things that alter water quality and can make swimming unsafe due to high levels of E. coli or harmful algae.

Despite the updated signage, those who study beach water safety in Canada say ceasing testing could impact people’s ability to make informed decisions about safe swimming this summer. 

Meanwhile, researchers have argued a warming climate in Canada, including more severe summer heat waves, means swimmable water for people to cool off in is more important than ever. 

“We see changing climate patterns, we see urban heat island effects, we see heat domes, we see that there’s a tremendous need for community cooling spaces,” said Gregary Ford, vice-president and Lake Ontario Waterkeeper at Swim Drink Fish, an environmental non-profit that advocates for safe, usable water bodies. Its name comes from signs often posted on shorelines in Canada: no swimming, no fishing and no drinking. 

Ford explained that warmer temperatures and extreme weather events — a part of climate change, which is primarily driven by the burning of fossil fuels — also contribute to more harmful algal blooms and other pathogens that affect the health of the water and people who use it.

Health unit says water testing is resource-intensive and too slow

In March 2026, the North Bay health unit, which also covers Kearney, Nipissing and South River, sent a letter to member municipalities saying sampling the area’s 60 public beaches was too resource-intensive, and lab results took three or four days, limiting their usefulness when water conditions change quickly. The health unit also argued that the risk of illness from water recreation in the region is low. The water was only tested about three times each summer, it said.

Last year, Public Health Sudbury and Districts, a region which includes Manitoulin Island and French River, ended routine water sampling as well — one of many cuts made after the medical officer of health said their funding has not kept pace with inflation.

“Obviously, there are growing pressures on municipalities and public health units … and so we understand that compromises have to be made, but not in something that affects public health,” Ford said. “This is a trend that we see during periods of economic stress and strain … Unfortunately, as these scalebacks start happening, the public is left with less information about their water and, honestly, that becomes the most important part.”

Swim Drink Fish aggregates data from across swimming spots in North America into an app called Swim Guide. But these helpful third-party tools rely on local data collected by public health departments.

“It’s really important that municipalities also provide historical data, even if they’re not sampling today. They should at least publicly make available the data and information that has been collected over the last five years, the last 10 years, so people can still make a somewhat informed decision about where they spend their time,” Ford said. That’s not something made available by the North Bay Parry Sound Health Unit, either.

There are options for protecting beachgoers, but they can’t replace testing: experts

A recent study from Toronto Metropolitan University, which surveyed 4,085 beachgoers at seven beaches in Canada between 2023 and 2025, found that about 2.6 per cent of swimmers reported becoming sick, with children and elderly people facing higher risk of “recreational water illness,” such as stomach issues, ear and eye infections or rashes.

Ian Young, principal investigator on the Canadian Beach Cohort Study, tracking recreational water illness across Canada, said despite that low risk, “having a solid monitoring plan is important to give people confidence in the beach.”

He pointed to other methods being used across the country to help combat the slow, unreliable nature of current testing. For example, at Bluffer’s Park Beach in Scarborough, Ont., the City of Toronto implemented a bird management program, involving removing sources of food and training dogs to spur geese into flight, once they realized a substantial amount of the E. coli in the water at the beach was caused by birds.

Ford, from Swim Drink Fish, has seen other solutions; municipalities like Kingston and Hamilton are trying out new technology that alerts citizens in real-time when sewers and sewer bypasses are overflowing and contaminating beach water. But, he said, this does not replace the need for monitoring.

“It is a far second in terms of a solution. The best solution is to be continuing and continuously monitoring these beaches,” Ford said. “Resources can be stretched thin at times. This is a public health interest, it is a tourism interest and it is an individual health and wellness interest as well. So, this should be a priority for public health units, and it’s disappointing to see some of these decisions that are being made.”

To help mitigate risk, North Bay’s health unit recommends swimmers wash or sanitize hands before eating after swimming, towel off well to help prevent swimmer’s itch, check for hazards before entering the water and avoid getting water in their mouths.

But North Bay resident Ashley Brooker, standing at the shore of Lake Nipissing, said she still doesn’t feel good about the testing changes. “I am a risk-taker, but that doesn’t mean that I want to risk getting sick or catching something,” she said. “Safety is a big thing, and if we’re putting our tax money into something then we should be getting the resources back.”

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.

Summary

• The amalgamation of Ontario’s 36 conservation authorities into nine regional bodies is expected to take effect in early 2027.
• A new directive from Environment Minister Todd McCarthy orders conservation authorities to halt any major decision-making processes, such as changing staffing structures or purchasing property, in the meantime.
• After a meeting between Environment Ministry officials and conservation authority staff on May 6, 2026, one public servant told The Narwhal, “The province has essentially handcuffed conservation authorities.”

On Friday, May 1, Ontario Environment Minister Todd McCarthy sent a letter to all conservation authority heads directing them to halt any “significant financial, asset or employment decisions” as the government begins consolidating the agencies tasked with protecting watersheds. 

The letter signals that the work to amalgamate authorities from 36 to nine, and shift oversight to a new government agency that takes direction from McCarthy’s office, has begun. 

Five days later, senior ministry officials told authority staff in an internal meeting that this reorganization will be complicated and still contains many unknowns. 

The directives “were not easy to write,” a senior official said at the meeting. “I’ll be frank to say that this required us to get into the [conservation authority] business in a way that we as a ministry aren’t typically.”

A recording of that meeting, which included discussion of the consolidation on drinking water protections, was shared with The Narwhal by one participant and independently verified by another. The Narwhal is not identifying the officials who led the meeting by name to respect their privacy as public sector workers with limited authority.

In it, a director in the ministry’s conservation and source protection branch notes the directive McCarthy sent out to authorities was not meant to affect the day-to-day business of conservation authorities, but to “put some guardrails in place that would sort of mitigate against any decision, like extraordinary decisions that would not be to the benefit of the regional [conservation authority].” 

Such guardrails are common in government-initiated mergers, the official said, to protect agencies and organizations from decisions that may harm their consolidated form. A staff member from McCarthy’s office, speaking unofficially, told The Narwhal this is “standard operating practice” for any amalgamation, designed to “essentially keep things stable.”  

Rhonda Bateman, chief administrative officer of Lower Trent Conservation, said in an email to The Narwhal, “It was not a surprise. We were expecting some direction.” 

“When businesses amalgamate or are merged, there needs to be a baseline of information available and I believe this is the intent behind the direction,” she said.

Along with the recording, The Narwhal was sent a copy of McCarthy’s letter, which was later publicly posted by the ministry. The Narwhal reached out to 10 conservation authority officials for comment, with most saying they were not allowed to comment, could not comment for fear of repercussions or were still trying to understand the implications of the directive. Five people agreed to speak to The Narwhal for this story, all on the condition of confidentiality. 

“The province has essentially handcuffed conservation authorities,” one public servant who attended the meeting told The Narwhal. “Conservation authorities are not in control now [of the consolidation], and it seems that they won’t be in control moving forward.” 

One conservation authority official in central Ontario said they were “surprised” by the “sweeping” nature of the directive, and felt that the consolidation was “out of our hands.”  

Conservation authorities are tasked with protecting Ontario watersheds by safeguarding local drinking water sources and reducing the risks from natural hazards like flooding, erosion and drought. The government’s move to amalgamate them from 36 agencies to nine is the biggest disruption since the agencies were created 80 years ago, and has created widespread concern about their continued ability to preserve access to fresh water for more than 80 per cent of Ontario residents.

The government’s 2026 budget officially greenlit the consolidation and gave the environment minister powers to issue directives as needed. It also created a new Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency, which will oversee the 36 conservation authorities during the transition, under the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks. This agency will work with Hassaan Basit, a longtime conservation authority official who is now the province’s chief conservation executive, and is staffed by a handful of bureaucrats, with a five-person board of directors made up of deputy ministers from other ministries. The agency’s goal is to see resources equally shared among the consolidated conservation authorities.

McCarthy’s first directive on the consolidation restricts conservation authorities’ actions to what has already been set out in their 2026 budgets. That includes making any changes to staff or governance structure, acquiring or disposing of any land, approving any new projects (like wells, for example) or making major purchases without explicit authorization from the government.

The official from McCarthy’s office told The Narwhal they expect conservation authorities to be able to do things that are beyond their budget. “We’ll likely approve it,” they said. “Conservation authorities remain independent.” They also noted that the restrictions don’t apply to land donations, as “they are not an expense.” 

The directive notes there will also be exceptions in responding to “an immediate danger to human life, health or property.” The official from McCarthy’s office said, for example, this could be “if the conservation authority has a dam and the dam is on the verge of breaking and they need to make emergency repairs.” 

These restrictions are in place until at least Feb. 1, 2027, when the consolidation is expected to take effect. They can be amended any time “at the sole discretion of the minister,” according to the letter.

Ontario’s drinking water is tied up in conservation authority changes but officials have few details

The details of how McCarthy’s directive will affect conservation authorities’ work protecting drinking water remain unclear. 

The authorities work closely with community-led source protection committees, which include directors from industries like agriculture, manufacturing and tourism to protect and properly manage drinking water. 

The province’s 19 source protection committees were created on the heels of the deadly water contamination crisis in Walkerton, Ont. They are supported by staff from conservation authorities, who provide data and carry out protective actions as the source protection authority.

The Narwhal reported in April on the impacts of consolidation on source protection committees, and the fact that 15 of the 19 committees had vacant chair positions. The government began seeking people to fill the chair positions soon after.

Many source protection staff were in attendance at the May 6 meeting hosted by Ministry of Environment officials after McCarthy’s directive was issued. 

In the recording of the meeting, ministry officials are heard assuring attendees that they were happy to keep working with conservation authority staff, and that the government remains committed to preserving drinking water protections. But the officials repeatedly said things are still being figured out, with “a range of scenarios” being considered. They acknowledged the lack of answers was “not terribly reassuring” and “anxiety producing, probably” for conservation authorities.  

During the two-hour meeting, ministry officials did not answer direct questions about whether the source protection regions would also be consolidated. 

“I think that is probably the first question that needs to be answered, and we can’t answer it,” the official responded. “Obviously, that has to come from the decisions from whoever is making them.”

McCarthy previously told The Narwhal the 19 source protection committees will remain as they are and work with the nine regional conservation authorities, but said their jurisdictions are “a work in progress.” The government has said changes to the Clean Water Act will be needed but hasn’t specified what those changes will be.  

“We’ve got eight months to sort out the details,” the official from McCarthy’s office told The Narwhal. “The point is not to rush this. We just started the process.”

During the meeting, ministry officials gave two explanations for their inability to answer attendees’ questions. First, they said they weren’t directly part of the decision-making process as the transition is being run by the new Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency, “not the ministry.” And second, they cited cabinet confidentiality, referring to private policy deliberations between Premier Doug Ford, his ministers and senior ministry officials. 

“Typically, sometimes the reason you have to, like, back away and stop engaging is because things become cabinet confidential at a certain point,” a senior official said in the meeting. “I’m not allowed, right? Because it’s become a cabinet process.”

They continued that staff in the ministry were working to ensure source protection plans, for example, weren’t being unnecessarily rewritten, though much of the consolidation process was still being sorted out.

“This isn’t a change many people were asking for and want necessarily, and I fully appreciate that I can’t necessarily know what all this means to you,” one official said in the meeting. They added that they hoped to help conservation authorities understand “what our thinking has been around the transition planning.”

“This is a government that is set to do this,” the official said. “This is happening.”

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This story is part of a series called Shockwave: Rising energy demand and the future of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes region is in the midst of a seismic energy shakeup, from skyrocketing data centre demand and a nuclear energy boom, to expanding renewables and electrification. In 2026, the Great Lakes News Collaborative will explore how shifting supply and demand affect the region and its waters.

Summary

• Wind blowing across the Great Lakes could generate clean electricity for the energy-hungry cities in the region, but there are currently no offshore wind projects harnessing that potential.
• Barriers to offshore wind on the Great Lakes include ecological concerns, regulatory hurdles and economic costs.
• Advocates say easing political restrictions and providing subsidies could kick-start an offshore wind industry in the region, and that ecological risks can be mitigated.

Covering an area the size of the United Kingdom and surrounded by half a dozen large, energy-hungry metropolitan regions, the Great Lakes region, surprisingly, boasts not a single offshore wind energy project.

We know that the resource and the demand are there. But no offshore wind effort has ever taken off.

Past efforts at a demonstration project called Icebreaker Wind, slated for Lake Erie off the coast of Cleveland, Ohio, fizzled out in 2023. In Ontario, which boasts 8,000 kilometres of Great Lakes coastline, a moratorium on offshore wind has been in place since 2011, with the provincial government having to fork over millions of dollars in damages to one wind energy company as a result.

But today, with electricity prices surging around the region, is it finally time for offshore wind to take its place? Do communities even want them?

Here, we speak to advocates for and opponents to offshore wind and investigate the myriad challenges such projects in the Great Lakes face.

What’s changing now?

A perfect storm of events has combined to push electricity prices to record levels for thousands of communities around the region.

Utility companies such as Consumers Energy in Michigan, We Energies, which operates in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and a host of others have embarked on system upgrades that are set to add up to 14 per cent to the cost of monthly electricity bills for consumers, with further rate hikes likely in the years ahead.

On top of that, the U.S. government has mandated that coal-fired electricity plants in Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania and elsewhere that were scheduled to be retired now remain open. That means that federal subsidies that are essential for keeping these loss-making plants running are likely to cost ratepayers billions more dollars.

Then there’s the contentious wave of data centres opening across the region, creating a huge new demand for utility-scale electricity.

All the while, recent years have seen a drive to reach net-zero carbon emissions. Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota plan to reach that goal by 2050.

Ontario aims to get to 80 per cent below its 1990 level of carbon emissions in the same time. New York state has declared an even more ambitious plan, to reach net zero by 2040.

On top of that, with the U.S. government banning offshore wind projects in oceans surrounding the country, there’s been a renewed push to see the Great Lakes — controlled by eight U.S. states and Ontario, rather than authorities in Washington, D.C., and Ottawa — become a new front in the development of the technology.

What is the energy potential for offshore wind on the Great Lakes?

Experts say offshore wind generated from the lakes could provide three times the amount of the electricity used by the eight U.S. Great Lakes states in 2023. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data from 2021 crunched by the Woodwell Climate Research Center found that Great Lakes water generates more wind than anywhere else east of the Mississippi River.

“According to reports done for Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources, Great Lakes offshore wind can be implemented with minimal aquatic impacts. If the turbines are 10 to 15 kilometres offshore, they will be almost invisible,” said Jack Gibbons of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.

“Offshore wind in the Canadian section of the Great Lakes has the potential to supply more than 100 per cent of Ontario’s electricity needs.”

Icebreaker Wind, the Cleveland project, got as far as securing a 50-year lake-bed lease from the State of Ohio in 2014. Predicted to provide 20 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 7,000 homes, its main goal was to function as a trial project.

But Icebreaker Wind is not completely dead, yet. Last year, a Maryland-based company called Mighty Waves Energy acquired the project, raising hopes among Cleveland leaders and many residents around the region that the first steps towards a lake-based wind energy future remain in place.

Mark Hessels, CEO of Mighty Waves Energy, spoke with Great Lakes Now over the phone, but declined to go on the record to discuss the company’s proposed new offshore wind project, and failed to provide a statement when asked.

What are the big challenges?

And yet, the barriers appear immense.

John Lipaj has been sailing and boating on Lake Erie ever since he was a child.

“I spent every summer out there on a boat. In July and August, when the temperatures rise, the wind would die,” he said, illustrating one of several reasons he and others think offshore wind isn’t suitable for Lake Erie.

“If there’s no wind at exactly the time of year when electricity is needed most, for air conditioning, then what’s the point of building offshore wind?”

As a board member of the Lake Erie Foundation, a non-profit, that’s not the main reason he and the organization he represents opposes offshore wind on Lake Erie.

“One of the things we were most concerned about is that bald eagles were almost extinct, and they’ve really come back along the Lake Erie shore. Now, they’re thriving,” he said.

“In the winter, they’ll fly out a couple of miles [offshore] looking for fish, especially if there’s ice [on the shoreline]. We’ve got real concerns about the bald eagle population being hurt by the wind turbine out on the lake, because that’s their feeding ground.”

In 2022, a wind energy company was fined US$8 million and sentenced to probation after its wind turbines were found to have killed more than 150 eagles over the course of a decade across ten U.S. states, including Michigan and Illinois.

Some conservation organizations opposing offshore wind have even come under fire. A report by Grist in 2021 alleged that the American Bird Conservancy, a US$30-million non-profit, has been one of the most powerful environment-focused opponents to wind turbine projects across the country, having received around US$1 million from fossil fuel interests.

A request by Great Lakes Now for comment from the American Bird Conservancy was not received by the time of publication.

All the while, others believe the potential threat to wildlife can be mitigated.

“Some people are unaware that the National Audubon Society supports Great Lakes offshore wind power. The good news is that offshore wind can be done in a bird-friendly way,” said Gibbons of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.

“We are recommending that the turbines should be turned off from dusk to dawn during the migratory bat seasons (late April and May and mid-July to the end of September) when wind speeds are less than seven metres per second, since bats fly more when wind speeds are low.”

Threats to wildlife aside, for Melissa Scanlan, director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for Water Policy, five leading factors have combined to stall progress in offshore wind:

• Jurisdictional fragmentation that prevents states and provinces from combining their efforts; 
• Inadequate planning;
• Policy instability at the federal government level; 
• Protracted litigation in the case of Ohio; and,
• A lack of sustained political will. 

There are other challenges.

“There’s definitely misinformation that circulates about offshore wind,” she said.

“From the research we’ve done, we think you can address that through transparent, science-based planning processes,” said Scanlan. “Without doing a more rigorous science-based planning process, if there’s a vacuum of reliable information, that can allow misinformation to be circulated more freely.”

On top of that, there are reservations around the economic return of such projects. Estimates suggest the cost of offshore wind on the Great Lakes could range from 7.5 to 12.9 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s more than double the cost of onshore wind or utility-scale solar.

But while the costs of delivering offshore wind are not inconsiderable, experts such as Scanlan say there’s also both a dollar and environmental cost of continuing to deploy fossil fuels for electricity generation.

Moreover, interest groups have allegedly been at work to make such efforts difficult to bring to fruition.

The former proprietor of the Icebreaker Wind project, the Lake Erie Energy Development Corp., has claimed that corruption within Ohio’s energy regulatory body and state leaders’ close ties to energy giant FirstEnergy made the project unworkable, and has sued FirstEnergy for up to US$10 million. Restrictions that the project faced, including calling for turbines to be shut down at night for eight months of the year, essentially torpedoed the project.

What would facilitate off-shore wind?

Industry innovators say that an easing of regulations at the state level would make a huge difference to the emergence of offshore wind in the Great Lakes. Investment in the form of tax breaks from state governments, which handle the leases and permits for any offshore wind projects in the Great Lakes, are another way. 

And while the cost of producing offshore wind is higher than its onshore equivalent, higher winds offshore combined with technological advances mean that energy production capacity from offshore could be up to 60 per cent more than onshore.

Scanlan of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for Water Policy is among the researchers who say offshore wind projects could play a significant role in meeting our rapidly growing energy needs.

“As a society, we need to develop energy resources that are not in conflict with protecting the environment,” she said.

“Offshore wind is no different from that.”

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.

Piping plovers have returned to Wasaga Beach, as they have done every spring for nearly 20 years. This time, their beachfront home has undergone some major changes, as a court case pressuring the federal government to ensure the plover is kept safe develops. 

That case was filed in April by Ecojustice, on behalf of Environmental Defence and Ontario Nature. Now, Environment and Climate Change Canada says it has begun an imminent threat assessment to determine whether an emergency order is needed to protect the tiny endangered birds and the habitat they love — natural sand dunes and shrubbery make for perfect nesting ground — on the world’s longest freshwater beach. 

For decades, both the Georgian Bay beach and the plover have been protected by the Ontario government through two main tools. First, the designation of Wasaga Beach as a provincial park, which meant development and disruption of the sandy shore was off-limits. Second, the plover was offered extra protection under the provincial Endangered Species Act. 

Neither of those protections stand anymore.

Last fall, the Doug Ford government removed a majority of the beachfront from Wasaga Beach Provincial Park and transferred it to the local municipality in an effort to boost tourism development. And in March, the government officially repealed the Endangered Species Act and replaced it with much weaker legislation that no longer recognizes the plover in its list of protected species. 

The town has promised it will protect the plover after the transfer — and has begun working with Birds Canada on its habitat protection — but residents are not convinced. Two local officials agreed to speak to The Narwhal on the condition their names be kept confidential, for fear of retribution. They said on April 13, a tractor owned by the municipality was seen raking more beachfront than was previously permitted — an action that could damage habitat and destroy plover nests. Though the raking hasn’t been repeated, many are concerned the beach is unprotected. The town did not respond to The Narwhal’s request for comment by the time of publication. 

As a result, environmental groups are taking the matter to federal court. 

In January, Ecojustice, on behalf of Environmental Defence and Ontario Nature, petitioned the federal government for an emergency order to offer protections for the piping plover by March, before machines are usually brought in to clear the beach after winter, and the birds begin migrating back.  

The federal government did not respond by that deadline. In April, the groups asked the Federal Court of Canada for a judicial review into the delay and to compel Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin to make a recommendation to cabinet to issue the emergency protection. 

The groups also asked the court for an urgent, temporary order — or an injunction — to prohibit any raking or harmful development on the beach, which is federally recognized as a critical habitat.

An official from Environment and Climate Change Canada told The Narwhal the federal government is assessing whether the piping plovers face an imminent threat. “At this time, we are unable to comment further due to litigation,” Keean Nembhard, the minister’s press secretary, wrote in a May 29 email.

The ministry-led assessment is an option offered to Canada’s environment minister under a little-used provision in the federal Species At Risk Act. The minister is obliged to recommend to cabinet an emergency order if the assessment shows a species faces imminent threats to its survival or recovery. The last time the government employed this option was in February 2023 to save Canada’s last spotted owls.

In his email, Nembhard said the government “remains committed to working collaboratively across jurisdictions to advance the protection and recovery of at-risk species such as the piping plover.” 

Concerned citizens received a letter dated May 7 from a regional director at the federal environment ministry informing them of the assessment, noting this assessment would be done “in a timely manner.” 

Here’s what you need to know about the tiny bird and its fate in Wasaga Beach.

What are piping plovers? And why are they endangered?

Piping plovers are sprightly shorebirds, each no bigger than a cotton ball, that can sometimes be seen bounding over Great Lakes beaches in the summertime. But seeing them isn’t easy — their sandy colour blends into their surroundings and they’ve become extremely rare in Ontario due to human encroachment.

“The main threat to the piping plover is human disturbance,” according to the Government of Ontario, “since the sandy beaches where plovers live are also popular for human recreation which can destroy nests.”

Plovers generally spend winters in the United States and Mexico, but return to more northern climates to nest for the summer.

For a long time, the Great Lakes were a prime destination for would-be plover parents. It’s been estimated that the region was once home to up to 800 breeding pairs. But the Great Lakes plover population cratered in the 1960s and ’70s, and the bird was considered extinct in Ontario by 1986.

But in recent decades, plovers have been staging a tentative comeback in the Great Lakes. A breeding pair returned to Sauble Beach (now Saugeen Beach) in 2007, sparking hope and enthusiasm among bird watchers and conservationists in the area. The birds have been spotted in the region annually since then.

But plovers’ hold is anything but secure. Some years pass with only a handful of breeding pairs observed, and other years come and go with no fledglings reaching maturity.

Why is Wasaga Beach important to plovers? And what do they like about it?

“Wasaga Beach is the most important and most productive nesting site for piping plovers in our province.”

That’s what Sydney Shepherd, the Ontario piping plover coordinator for Birds Canada, told The Narwhal last summer. The beach has been home to 59 nests and 87 fledglings since the birds returned about two decades ago, according to Birds Canada, a national conservation group. 

While plovers have been observed on other beaches in the Great Lakes region, none are anywhere near as popular with plovers as Wasaga Beach. The plovers that have been born on Wasaga Beach make up nearly 50 per cent of all fledglings in Ontario, and many of them have gone on to establish their own nests elsewhere in the region. 

Plovers tend to value Wasaga Beach for different reasons than human beachgoers. While tourists might prefer a well-groomed beach for lounging, plovers require naturalized shorelines: shrubbery and sand dunes offer cover from predators. That means of all the 14 kilometres of beachfront at Wasaga, only a small fraction near the northeastern tip of the park is suitable plover habitat.

What’s happening at Wasaga Beach?

The fortunes of the Town of Wasaga Beach have long been tied to the sandy shoreline that gives the town its name. Tourism to the area is the main economic driver, drawing more than 1.6 million visitors a year according to the municipality’s website.

But while tourism brings opportunity to the residents of Wasaga Beach, it also puts pressure on plover habitat. Until recently, that tension was managed by staff at Wasaga Beach Provincial Park, who were mandated to preserve and protect the sand dunes and other beach areas that plovers frequent.

The vast majority of the beachfront had long been within the boundaries of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park, and some in the town believed the park hindered efforts to spruce it up and develop new amenities and attractions to boost tourism revenue.

The Doug Ford government heard those concerns and acted on them. Ontario would sever more than half of the beachfront from the park and hand it over to the town to manage, Ford announced in 2025. Earlier this year, the province confirmed its intention to move forward with that plan, despite 98 per cent of formal citizen feedback on the plan being negative.

The Narwhal confirmed that transfer has now happened. 

All of the suitable plover habitat on Wasaga Beach is within the land set to be removed from the provincial park, meaning the habitat will no longer be protected by a provincial park designation.

The town, for its part, says it’s committed to protecting piping plovers. But it has yet to release its full redevelopment plans, and that leaves conservationists worried that the beach’s plover habitat is threatened.

Shepherd told The Narwhal this week that Birds Canada is in the process of formalizing their role with the Town of Wasaga Beach. The group is “seeking a committed partnership” to support the long-term protection and recovery of piping plovers that would enable them to monitor and protect the nests and the birds, and also increase education and awareness of the species. 

“So far, we have collaborated for one training session for [town] staff to begin to introduce what piping plover conservation entails,” she said in an email.

Are piping plovers otherwise protected?

The removal of provincial park designation from plover habitat on Wasaga Beach comes on the heels of other policy changes that weaken species protection in Ontario.

In 2025, Ontario repealed its Endangered Species Act and replaced it with new legislation called the Species Conservation Act, a weaker set of rules that drops some key protections.

One difference between the two acts is the newer one adopts a more narrow definition of “habitat” than the former act. When it comes to legal protections for the habitats of endangered species, the new legislation’s scope is limited to the specific area an animal nests or dens in, rather than the larger area it uses to travel or find food.

But even that limited protection doesn’t stand for piping plovers, which have been removed from Ontario’s list of protected species. With the loss of provincial park status, the plover habitat has been stripped of another protection that could have restricted the beach grooming activities that render Wasaga Beach unsuitable for plovers — and appear to have already begun.

That’s why environmental groups are now turning to the federal government to fill the gap. Nationally, there is a species-at-risk law that can be invoked for the protection of an endangered species and the broader habitat it needs to survive. The question is whether the federal government will use it to save the piping plover’s favourite Ontario beach.

Updated on May 29, 2026 at 2:52 p.m. ET: this story has been updated with new information about the federal government’s imminent threat assessment and to note the plovers’ most recent arrival at Wasaga Beach.

Updated on April 22, 2026, at 2:55 p.m. ET: this story has been corrected to note that piping plovers have been removed from the Government of Ontario’s list of protected species, meaning even the individual and its nest are not provincially protected.

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.

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.”

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.

Summary

• The Canada Water Agency will cut about 13 jobs to absorb a $5-million budget cut, as Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to reduce government spending.
• The agency leads ecosystem restoration and protection work in major freshwater ecosystems, such as the Great Lakes, Lake Winnipeg and the Mackenzie River.
• A spokesperson said the agency “remains fully committed to delivering on its mandate to improve freshwater management in Canada.”

Internal government emails show staff at the Canada Water Agency trying to make sense of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s budget cuts in response to questions from the media.

The Canada Water Agency launched in October 2024 to help protect Canada’s fresh water, including leading restoration work to clean up the Great Lakes, Lake Winnipeg and other important sources of drinking water. Canada is home to 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water, which is being threatened by climate-driven floods, droughts and algal blooms, as well as industrial contamination and other groundwater stressors.

Carney’s first federal budget proposed $3.8 million in lower spending by 2029-30 at the agency, and a further $1.2 million categorized as a separate “ongoing,” or permanent spending reduction, for a total of $5 million in cuts. They were part of Carney’s $60 billion in proposed cuts — split into $48 billion in spending reductions through 2029-30, and a further $12 billion in “ongoing” cuts with no given end date.

The Narwhal reported on the budget in November, summarizing the government’s proposal as cutting $5 million in total spending at the agency over a number of years. After that story was published, the agency emailed The Narwhal with a request for a “small correction,” asking that figure be changed to $3.8 million.

When The Narwhal asked the agency why it shouldn’t include the $1.2 million in ongoing spending cuts in the figure — which would make it $5 million — internal emails released under Access to Information law show staff reached out to Finance Canada, sharing a screenshot of the budget’s spending review page for the agency with the proposed “ongoing” cut circled in red. 

“Hello Finance Department colleagues, we are fact-checking an article in The Narwhal that mentions the [agency]’s budget cuts, and just want to make sure we are understanding the budget chart correctly,” the agency wrote. 

The water agency asked the Finance Department whether the $5-million figure, which it had already asked The Narwhal for a correction on, was in fact, correct.

After the Finance Department said it would look into the matter, the water agency asked for guidance on how to explain the permanent portion of the spending reductions to journalists.

“Do you have messaging you can share around communicating the ‘ongoing’ to the media?” the staff member asked.

The next day, an official at Finance Canada said the story did not need a correction after all.

Canada Water Agency to cut 13 jobs, but continue restoration and protection of fresh water

Last month, a Canada Water Agency planning document showed how it expected to absorb the first three fiscal years’ worth of cuts, amounting to $2.6 million by 2028-29. One result was the loss of roughly 13 jobs, or what’s known as full-time equivalent positions, from a workforce of 223.

It said it was also planning on “modernizing government operations” and “leveraging new technology” as well as making administrative and support functions more efficient.

At the same time, the agency plans to keep conducting water quality and ecosystem restoration, including in the Great Lakes, it said.

The federal budget says cuts are necessary to “rein in government spending” from pandemic highs. Carney has gone on to trumpet other multibillion-dollar investments in areas like the military, technology and infrastructure that could in turn pose new environmental challenges for water.

Last week, the Canada Water Agency took on a new task when the Carney government promised $3.8 billion to “protect nature” as part of a new environmental strategy. The agency will be working on the country’s first National Water Security Strategy meant to reflect Indigenous knowledge systems including water stewardship.

The Narwhal emailed the Canada Water Agency asking how its spending cuts will affect freshwater stewardship and restoration work.

A spokesperson said the government’s budget cuts would not impact the agency’s “planned activities, staffing and funding commitments for restoration and protection” of its eight freshwater ecosystem initiatives through Canada’s Freshwater Action Plan, a “signature” federal program.

The program includes the Great Lakes, lakes like Simcoe and Winnipeg and rivers like the St. Lawrence in Ontario and Quebec, and the Mackenzie in the Northwest Territories. Former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s 2023 federal budget allocated $650 million over 10 years to these freshwater initiatives.

“Like all federal organizations, the Canada Water Agency is contributing to the government’s plan to reduce spending, eliminate duplicative programs and focus resources on core priorities,” the spokesperson wrote.

“The agency remains fully committed to delivering on its mandate to improve freshwater management in Canada by providing leadership, effective collaboration federally and improved coordination and collaboration with provinces, territories and Indigenous Peoples to proactively address national and regional transboundary freshwater challenges and opportunities.”

The agency also told The Narwhal the reduction in jobs would be staggered, with four next fiscal year, followed by another four the year after and five more after that.

Asked how the agency was planning for the budget’s proposed $1.2 million in permanent cuts, the spokesperson reiterated the budget review was meant to ensure government spending was sustainable and funding cost-effective programs and activities.

Federal funds support water conservation in Ontario and the Great Lakes

The spending reductions come at a time when the Ontario government is amalgamating its watershed protection agencies, called conservation authorities, from 36 to nine, as well as moving to give itself the power to dictate more rules around drinking water. 

Federal funding has been important for conservation authorities because Ontario has not been investing as much in community science and ecosystem restoration, Catherine Febria, the Canada Research Chair in freshwater restoration ecology, said. 

An associate professor at the University of Windsor’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, Febria said that the federal “scale of investment is something that the province was never able to do.”

“That was really exciting, it was like a leapfrog in progress with this single initiative, and a number of large-scale projects were invested in [over] the first two years,” she said, naming the freshwater ecosystem initiatives in places like the Great Lakes as one example.

The federal government and Ontario have been working together “for over 50 years” through a series of agreements on protecting and conserving the Great Lakes, the spokesperson for the Canada Water Agency said. 

As one example, the Canada-Ontario Agreement on Great Lakes Water Quality and Ecosystem Health lays out how the two will coordinate protection efforts.

“This partnership has led to remarkable improvements, including dramatic reductions in harmful pollutants, and the return of pollution-sensitive species such as bald eagles,” the spokesperson wrote.

Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks did not respond to questions from The Narwhal about how much provincial funding was going towards efforts to restore freshwater ecosystems, and to what extent the ministry was working with the federal water agency.

Febria said given the federal water agency is still relatively new, it’s still not clear what its full mandate will be, not to mention if or how the proposed cuts will impact its work or what exactly may be lost.

She said another Carney initiative, directing $1.7 billion toward a series of scientific initiatives, including research awards attracting high-level talent from abroad, holds promise. Some of the research awards will focus on water security, environment and climate resilience. 

Still, it’s a “tricky balance,” she added, between investing in research and also carrying out on-the-ground work to improve local areas.

“I think we need both,” she said. “When the pendulum swings towards a whole bunch of researchers, that’s great, but at the end of the day, we still need people and organizations and communities on the ground.”

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Mycologist Aishwarya Veerabahu regularly walks the forests near her home in Wisconsin, marvelling at the myriad shapes and colours of mushrooms, sometimes foraging for something to bring home and sauté in garlic and butter. It’s a landscape she knows well, but in the last few years, she’s been noticing a worrying and unfamiliar presence: a vibrant yellow, tightly clustered invasive making itself at home. 

Known as golden oyster, it’s a ’shroom completely altering native fungi communities in North America.

“Golden oysters will grow in an order of magnitude more than any other mushroom that you’d see. If you come up on a log with golden oysters on it, there’s always a ton of them, multiple clusters,” Veerabahu said.

The popular mushrooms, often found on menus and supermarket shelves, are native to forests in Russia and Asia. They were first brought to North America in the early 2000s for cultivation, and took to the forests by 2010, expanding their numbers and range rapidly.

“There are some times where I’ve gone through a forest and teared up because I know that there are other mushrooms that were in that wood that aren’t there anymore,” Veerabahu said. “It can be a very sad thing when now it’s just dominated by this one species.”

A researcher at the University of Madison-Wisconsin, Veerabahu published a study last August that used data from citizen scientists to confirm the trend she’s been seeing locally. Golden oyster mushrooms — scientific name Pleurotus citrinopileatus— are quickly invading North America, including Ontario. 

And, scientists say, a booming home-growing trend may be accelerating their spread into forests and impacting biodiversity.

Golden oysters have been found in 25 states, “after escaping cultivation” of commercial growers and hobbyists. They’ve made their way to Ontario, where there have been more than 80 sightings logged on the iNaturalist app of the clusters growing out of dead hardwood in forests, provincial parks and even residential neighbourhoods. 

While most golden oysters in Canada are still concentrated closer to the border with the United States, the species has already travelled as far north as Magnetawan, Ont., near Parry Sound, and is increasingly established around Georgian Bay, on Lake Huron. The speed and distance of its spread has been surprising, Veerabahu said.

“It has thoroughly been unleashed and rapidly spread over the course of a short decade,” she said, adding that the mushrooms have more recently appeared in Quebec. “The best thing that we can do now is to try and prevent it from getting to new regions.” 

Provincial invasive species regulations don’t capture golden oyster mushrooms

Cassidy Mailloux is a guide at the Ojibway Prairie Complex in Windsor, Ont., who takes guests through the nature reserves year-round. She’s also working on a biodiversity study of the region’s native mushrooms as part of her master’s degree at the University of Windsor and has posted golden oyster sightings on iNaturalist, observations that helped inform Veerabahu’s study.

“We’ve only seen it in one of our parks out of the entire complex … and that’s one of our heavily foot-trafficked and most travelled parks,” she said, adding that this is a good sign that the invasion “hasn’t fully taken off yet.”

Still, she worries about the effect of invasive golden oysters on rarer species of fungi, such as the coral pink marulius, which is uncommonly reported but in large abundance in the Ojibway Prairie Complex. 

“I’m worried the golden oyster mushroom might take precedence,” Mailloux said, given golden oysters are an aggressive species that can grow quickly and prolifically in many kinds of wood and even sawdust — unlike some native species that require specific conditions to thrive. Both the city and her organization are still trying to figure out the best way to manage the invasive — and say visitors documenting sightings can inform this work. 

“Encouraging citizens to upload these observations can really help management and our ecosystem,” Mailloux said, “and just keeping a track on how bad it might be getting in the area.”

Despite the threat, the Government of Ontario has not added live oyster mushrooms to its prohibited or restricted invasive species lists, which would make it illegal to import, buy, sell — or sometimes even possess — an ecologically harmful strain.

Without this regulation, Veerabahu said, live cultures continue to be transported across borders. And, she said once golden oysters colonize an area, fewer other unique fungal species will be found there. The communities that do exist are also entirely changed. 

“Let’s say in an uncolonized dead tree, you had a nice, rich community of fungi A, B, C, D, E. Once golden oyster colonizes, now it’s golden oyster and fungi X, Y, Z,” Veerabahu said. 

This makes her concerned about a domino effect because fungal communities are primary wood decomposers of forests, playing an important role in cycling nutrients and storing carbon. “The identity of which species are able to coexist in that space is changing.” 

Monica Liedtke, terrestrial invasive plant coordinator for the Invasive Species Centre, in Sault St. Marie, Ont., agreed. She told The Narwhal via email that non-native invasive fungi can significantly disrupt Ontario’s ecosystems and environmental processes that have developed over thousands of years.

“When non-native invasive fungi establish, they can interfere with important symbiotic relationships between native fungi, trees and plants,” Liedtke told The Narwhal. Golden oysters can quicken the rate of wood decay, which then impacts the birds and bugs that use dead and dying trees for homes and food. “Over time, these disruptions can affect biodiversity across the entire ecosystem.”

Meanwhile, climate change is creating warmer conditions that will make Ontario even more hospitable to these mushrooms, allowing them to expand their range. Veerabahu and her team used a climate prediction model developed by NASA to predict what might happen in the next 15 years. The model predicted that the North American region climatically suitable for golden oyster mushrooms to grow would almost double. 

Grow-your-own mushroom kits threaten Ontario forests

Kyle McLoughlin, an arborist and supervisor of forest planning and health for the City of Burlington, said the reason he fears golden mushrooms is exactly why they’re popular among amateur growers.

“From an ecological perspective, they don’t have a niche. They can go anywhere. They’re very wide-ranging. They’re very comfortable in a lot of different types of wood and a lot of different environments,” McLoughlin said of golden oysters. “This is also why you can grow them so well.”

Kits with detailed growing instructions are readily available on the internet, with prices between $20 and $40. These are a “major source of their invasion,” McLoughlin said. 

“It’s literally being introduced into people’s homes and their properties through grow kits,” McLoughlin said. “We shouldn’t be selling people potential invasive species to bring into their homes.”

Still, grow kits remain widely sold with little public awareness of the risks. Consumers are often not warned when they buy a grow kit that tossing spent soil onto the compost pile, or leaving a kit outdoors, could unintentionally help an invasive spread.

There are some ways people can help slow the spread if they spot oyster mushrooms. If someone sees a log on their own property pop with golden oysters for the first time, it could be helpful to burn it, Veerabahu explained. People can also forage the mushrooms from forested areas, collecting them in closed containers to prevent spores from spreading.

The challenge is to muster enough public awareness and political will before things get out of control.

“It’s kind of like cockroaches. Once you start to see them, you know there’s a heck of a lot more in your walls,” McLoughlin said. “They are putting billions of spores into the air when they’re fruiting. And this is happening constantly.”

Some companies that have sold these kits around the world, like Far West Fungi, North Spore and MycoPunks have since discontinued some products due to concern. In a blog post titled “Yellow Oyster Disaster Zone,” MycoPunks wrote: “No shade intended on any other vendors who choose to keep selling golden oyster kits … we’ve all got our own different moral codes, but it’s not something we feel able to do in good conscience any more.”

But, given a lack of regulation in the province, it’s still easy to import kits from within Canada or around the world to grow in Ontario.

“Gardeners [and] hobby farmers should carefully consider the species they are cultivating. Choosing native species helps to reduce ecological risk,” Liedtke, from the Invasive Species Centre, said. Some kits sell species such as lion’s mane or chestnut mushrooms, which are both edible and native to Ontario. 

For those who are growing golden oysters, the Invasive Species Centre advises that used grow kits should be sealed in a garbage bag and left in the sun for several days to a week; this process, called solarization, helps kill remaining spores and fungal material. Then, the bag should be disposed of in municipal waste — not compost. 

“Neither the producer nor the consumer wants to be part of that spread,” Veerabahu said. “The mushroom grow kits are a huge point of concern. They’re essentially a live culture that can be transported anywhere, but they’re not being regulated and I’ll never blame hobby mushroom growers for that.”

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This story is part of a series called Shockwave: Rising energy demand and the future of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes region is in the midst of a seismic energy shakeup, from skyrocketing data centre demand and a nuclear energy boom, to expanding renewables and electrification. In 2026, the Great Lakes News Collaborative will explore how shifting supply and demand affect the region and its waters.

Summary

• Reusing waste heat could help the Great Lakes reduce climate change emissions from heating and cooling buildings.
• The region has a huge opportunity for energy innovation that could reduce costs to consumers and limit damage to land and water.
• The biggest barriers are political and organizational.

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The energy system in the Great Lakes region, as in most parts of North America, is wasteful. Stupendously wasteful.

Consider these data points. Two-thirds of the energy generated by the 2,100-megawatt Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, east of Toronto, comes in the form of heat, not electricity. The excess heat is transferred to cooling water that is dumped into Lake Ontario.

For data centres, a booming, voracious energy user, nearly all the electricity that enters a facility to power servers turns into heat. Ejecting that heat so that the servers continue to support Zoom calls and ChatGPT queries can consume gobs of energy and water.

Even underground business and household waste holds wasted energy. Sewage flows in pipes at an average temperature of roughly 15 C, a thermal energy source waiting for an enterprising soul to tap into and extract the heat.

A movement is underway to do just that — mine the region’s power plants, data centres and sewers for heat and use it to develop cleaner, cheaper energy that helps reduce or remove carbon emissions from heating and cooling. The same practices cut the expense of adding new electric generating capacity.

Such a transformation is certainly possible and has been embraced in northern Europe. But it will not be easy here. Though the physics and equipment for waste-heat recovery are tested and proven, other barriers — financial, organizational and political — are more formidable hurdles for a region and a country in which energy efficiency is less valued than energy expansion.

“It’s not a technology issue,” said Luke Gaalswyk, president and chief executive officer of Ever-Green Energy, a district energy company based in St. Paul, Minnesota, that is eyeing wastewater as a heat source. “The engineering of this is well understood. It’s an awareness issue, it’s a funding issue, it’s a priority issue. We, the United States, don’t have the same policy frameworks or funding mechanisms that Europeans do as it relates to these sorts of projects and incentivizing waste-heat recovery.”

Gaalswyk and others see tantalizing opportunities for waste heat in aiding the region’s electric transition. The benefits include cheaper energy, less exposure to fossil fuel price fluctuations, fewer carbon emissions, less land disruption to build new generating and transmission capacity, and less thermal pollution into waterways. But getting there, they say, requires foundational shifts in understanding, attitudes and public policy. 

A new energy scenario

Electricity demand in the Great Lakes is growing, in some states for the first time in decades. If the projected buildout occurs, data centres will gobble electricity while the climate-friendly push to electrify everything boosts demand for electrons. 

Thermal networks, such as district heating systems that circulate hot water or steam to multiple buildings, garner less attention. Comparable to a home radiator at scale, they have been part of the urban energy landscape for more than a century, predating the invention of the gas-powered automobile. College campuses have them, as do hospital complexes. Cities like St. Paul, Chicago, Rochester and Lansing use district heating or cooling in their downtown cores. Toronto has a district cooling system that uses water drawn from deep in Lake Ontario to cool 80 buildings.

Waste heat — or, heat that is currently regarded as waste — could be a new reservoir of energy for district heating systems.

To find one source, building owners need only look beneath their basements. Promoting sewer thermal energy is a passion project for Paul Kohl, the board chair of the Sewer Thermal Energy Network, a trade association founded in 2023 to advocate for an unsung energy source. “We thought, let’s get people talking about it,” he said.

Kohl’s primary pitch is that sewer thermal energy goes hand-in-hand with reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings. Say an office complex wants to stop burning fuel oil for heat and instead wants to install a heat pump. An air-source heat pump, which extracts heat from ambient air, is a common option. But it can be problematic in an era of constrained electricity supply.

“What we’re finding is there are certain entities that are really excited about electrifying their building stock but they’re running into electrical demand problems,” Kohl said. “They can’t get enough electricity from the supplier.”

Enter sewer thermal. The building owner could instead tap into the sewer line running beneath the property and circulate the wastewater through a water-based heat pump that extracts the heat. The sewage is always contained and is not a health risk for those in the building. The water-based heat pump still uses electricity, but because of water’s superior capacity to transfer heat, its electricity demand is about half that of an air-based unit. In short, the well-understood thermal dynamics of water translate into substantial energy savings.

The sewer is a heat resource that constantly renews itself — people take showers, do laundry and wash dishes every day, using hot water in the process. The heat that went into the water could be used again. So why aren’t there more such systems? Kohl cited two major obstacles. One is knee-jerk revulsion, typically from the general public. “The ‘ick’ factor,” he said. 

The second is an unwillingness from utilities to allow other organizations to access their pipe infrastructure when it is not the utility’s mandate to do so. The utilities, he said, are more concerned with regulatory compliance and ensuring the integrity of their pipes.

Asked if his organization operates like a matchmaker, uniting parties that otherwise might not have met, Kohl turned the analogy around. A matchmaker works only if there are willing participants, he said. “A lot of water and wastewater utilities are the consummate bachelors. So they’re like, ‘If I never have to do this, great.’”

What brings utilities into the market? Progressive leadership, Kohl said.

Leaders heating the way

That leadership is on display in pockets around the Great Lakes region, from both the public and private sectors. 

In St. Paul, Ever-Green Energy has drawn up plans to tap the heat in the roughly 650,000,000 litres of wastewater that flows daily out of the Metropolitan Council’s treatment plant and into the Mississippi River. The US $150 million project would use the wastewater heat to replace the natural gas that currently fuels half of the district energy system, which is the largest hot water system in the United States.

Project proponents, including the City of St. Paul and Ever-Green, applied for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s climate pollution reduction grant in 2024 but they were not selected. (Ever-Green’s wastewater heat project in Duluth also was not selected for the grant.) Though Clean Heat St. Paul, as the project is known, is currently unfunded, leaders continue to advocate for it.

“It presents an enormous opportunity for our community, for our state, to build a project that would generate global recognition around what’s possible with linking up wastewater and district heating,” Gaalswyk said.

Across the border, Toronto Western Hospital, part of the city’s leading hospital system, partnered with Noventa, an energy company, to install the world’s largest raw sewage thermal system. Completed in 2025, the project provides about 90 per cent of the hospital’s heating and cooling. 

Also in Toronto, Enwave, a district energy company, operates the Deep Lake Water Cooling system that uses cold water drawn from Lake Ontario to cool 115 buildings before the water is sent to taps as drinking water. Enwave, which operates systems across eastern Canada, is now adapting that system to utilize waste heat from the cooling operations so that heating and cooling work in tandem. At the same time, the company is considering sewer heat recovery from a wastewater treatment plant in Mississauga, Ont.

“The idea is you’re trying to capture waste heat in whatever form you can find it in,” said Carson Gemmill, vice president for solutions and innovations at Enwave.

More trade associations are embracing that logic. The Boltzmann Institute, a group of engineers focused on obstacles to electrification, persuaded the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers to start a campaign in September 2025 to advocate for thermal energy systems. Since the province is considering new nuclear power plants and building small modular reactors, including four 300-megawatt units at Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, the institute would like to see their designs incorporate waste heat reuse.

“In Ontario, the heat rejected from nuclear power plants is quite a bit greater than the heat required for heating with natural gas in the whole province,” said Michael Wiggin, a Boltzmann Institute director who is also leading the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers’ thermal energy advocacy. “So there’s an enormous possibility to use the heat from these power plants to heat cities.”

Waste heat can flip conventional narratives on their head. Data centres today are maligned for their energy needs. Yet what if their waste heat was put to beneficial use? 

That’s the objective in Lansing, Michigan, where Deep Green, a London-based company, has proposed a 24-megawatt, US $120-million data centre project that would transfer its waste heat into a district heating system run by the Lansing Board of Water and Light, a water and power provider. The Lansing City Council is set to vote on the project on April 6.

“Previously, we didn’t consider heat as an asset because we didn’t need to,” Mark Lee, CEO of Deep Green, wrote in a January 2026 blog post. “There was an abundance of power, cheap energy and less awareness of environmental impact. That’s changing: electricity prices are high, grids are congested and there’s pressure to meet net-zero and [environmental, social and governance] targets.”

Barriers to entry

Even with these first steps, energy experts agree that North America, as a whole, is playing catch-up. Scandinavian countries have been reusing waste heat for decades. Stockholm has a 3,000-kilometre district energy pipe network that serves 800,000 residents and more than 90 per cent of the city’s buildings. More than 30 data centres feed waste heat into the system. In Oslo, sewer thermal provided nearly 7 per cent of the energy for the city’s district heating system in 2025. As a whole, the system provides 30 per cent of Oslo’s heating and hot water demand. China, a more recent entrant in the market, has developed world-champion projects in Qingdao and elsewhere.

Committed cities and governments can reach scale quickly. “The Chinese had nothing hardly in the early ’90s, now they’ve got perhaps the most district heating installed capacity in the world,” Wiggin said.

Rapid growth in waste-heat recovery will not happen in the Great Lakes region on its own. Without policy signals, electric companies, data centre operators and water utilities don’t have the incentives to innovate and co-operate, Kohl said. And for waste heat, collaboration is the key to success.

What are those policy signals? Gaalswyk focused on carrots: tax breaks for companies that install heat recovery systems and a quicker permitting process for those that incorporate efficiency measures.

Wiggin, by contrast, outlined the sticks. A tax on waste heat. State or provincial efficiency standards.

Kohl mentioned both measures. Massachusetts, he noted, set aside state funds for waste-heat recovery feasibility studies. New York, meanwhile, passed a law in 2022 to develop a regulatory framework for thermal energy networks. The law requires the largest investor-owned utilities to submit pilot projects for development.

Those in the district energy industry see waste heat as a massive opportunity, one that begins in the early stages of project development, whether it’s a data centre or a nuclear power station. Incorporating waste-heat recovery into a project’s initial design is easier than retrofitting the facility in the future.

“Our thesis is data centre projects that are bringing additional layers of community benefit to communities will find more success in building trust and gaining the necessary social licence to operate,” Gaalswyk said. “A really important aspect of that is heat recovery, free heat. Again, it’s not a technology issue. We have the heat pumps, we have the industry that can design heat offtake. It’s a matter of figuring out how to get a diverse stakeholder group to work together to realize these benefits in tandem.”

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Summary

• The Ontario government has released its final plan to amalgamate 36 conservation authorities into nine
• The new plan removes an earlier proposal to merge authorities on Lake Superior and Lake Huron
• A new agency created to oversee the consolidation will have a $20-million budget to put the plan in place, and $3 million annually once it’s up and running

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The Ford government is moving ahead with its plan to merge 36 conservation authorities into nine, two more than originally proposed. And it has created an agency with a $20-million budget to see it through.

Ontario Environment Minister Todd McCarthy said he consulted with more than 500 people in making this change. The proposed plan also received more than 14,000 comments on the Environmental Registry of Ontario, where the government is legally mandated to post changes to environmental and energy policy for public feedback (though the Ford government has previously created loopholes for that requirement). 

“Ontario currently has a fragmented system of conservation authorities, each of which have different policies, different standards, different fees and different levels of staffing and technical capabilities,” McCarthy told reporters on March 10. 

“These inconsistencies have hampered the ability of conservation authorities to perform their duties. This has led to unpredictable and inconsistent turnaround times for approvals, creating uncertainty and delays for farmers, homeowners, landowners, builders and anyone seeking permits.”

The government’s proposed fix to consolidate authorities has been received with a lot of trepidation and concern from conservation authorities, the municipalities that fund them and use their services and other groups that rely on their expertise. 

For nearly 80 years, the provincial agencies have been tasked with protecting public health and safety related to the province’s watersheds. That means safeguarding local drinking water sources and working to reduce the risks from natural hazards like flooding, erosion and drought. As Ontario’s population has grown, they have also been responsible for regulating development to minimize those risks, issuing permits only to those who pay attention to sustainable construction and growth.

“Conservation authorities don’t just ‘approve’ things; they provide the technical rules of the game that make projects workable and protect people and water,” Paola Cetares, director of public affairs for the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, told The Narwhal when the consolidation plan was first announced. That includes creating criteria for stormwater management and collating flood maps, erosion data and hydrologic studies to guide development. 

McCarthy insists the core mandates of the unique Ontario agencies will not change. Consolidation, he said, will mean “stronger flood resilience, clear processes for municipalities and permanent applicants and better support for housing and infrastructure projects, all while maintaining the science-based decisions that people and businesses expect.”

“Regional conservation authorities would continue to be independent, municipally governed organizations,” McCarthy said, emphasizing that there will be no layoffs, no changes in the funding and governance structure and that the agencies would continue to have control over their land. 

The government will table legislation to make these changes when Queen’s Park is back in session later this month, with the consolidation set to take effect in 2027. 

Here are the key takeaways from the final consolidation proposal. 

What does the final conservation authority consolidation look like? 

When the Ford government first discussed consolidation, they considered as few as six regional conservation authorities, McCarthy said. After the consultation period — in which at least one member of caucus voiced her concern — the government has landed on nine. 

The final boundaries of the regional authorities’ structure include a handful of significant changes from the original proposal. 

Notably, the Lake Erie Regional Conservation Authority and a Huron-Superior Regional Conservation Authority have each been split into two. The latter was initially controversially proposed to merge the authority in Thunder Bay, Ont., on Lake Superior, with that of one on Lake Huron, but the government has walked back on that — a decision that has been welcomed by the northern agency.

Members of the impacted authorities in this region previously told The Narwhal the original boundaries were too large and connected too many differing landscapes. “We listened, we acted,” McCarthy said.

Additionally, the Central Lake Ontario Regional Conservation Authority has been enlarged to include both the current Toronto Region Conservation Authority and the smaller neighbouring Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority. 

And the conservation authority managing the lands around the city of Kingston, Ont., has been moved from the St. Lawrence River Conservation Area to the Eastern Lake Ontario Regional Conservation Authority. 

Who will manage the conservation authority consolidation and how much will it cost?

In 2025, the Ford government created the Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency to help lead this transformation. The agency has been given $20 million to usher through the consolidation. At the March 10 press conference, McCarthy pledged an additional $3 million annually to the agency, which would continue after the consolidation was complete. 

The government intends to create transitional committees for the nine new regional organizations with representatives from each of the existing conservation authorities under them. The chair of each of these committees would become the chief administrative officer of the regional authority for up to two years. 

The government is also instructing regional authorities to create “watershed councils” made up of members of municipalities and Indigenous communities to identify local priorities and “ensure that watershed management continues to be informed by the people who know their watersheds best,” McCarthy said. 

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