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.”

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Any day now, a piping plover will make its seasonal return to Wasaga Beach, as it has done every spring for nearly 20 years. This time, its beachfront home could be a little less secure, which is why a new court case is pressuring the federal government to ensure the plover is kept safe. 

The world’s longest freshwater beach provides the perfect habitat for the tiny endangered birds, offering natural sand dunes and shrubbery for nesting and growing their population. 

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 just last month, the government officially repealed the Endangered Species Act and replaced it with much weaker legislation that no longer recognizes the plover on 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 Apr. 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 brought in to clear the beach after winter, and the birds begin migrating back. The federal government did not respond by that deadline.

In response, the groups have asked for a judicial review by the Federal Court of Canada into the delay and to compel Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin to make a recommendation to cabinet to issue the emergency protection.

The groups have 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. 

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 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.

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Summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The absence of details raises red flags for experts. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New boundaries of conservation authorities could affect source protection committees 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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Summary

• Salt applied to roads and parking lots in winter is washing into the Lake Simcoe watershed and others throughout Ontario.
• Increasing salinity in the Lake Simcoe watershed is a threat to biodiversity and drinking water.
• One possible solution to the problem is introducing limited liability for owners of commercial parking lots, so they aren’t tempted to oversalt their properties to protect against “slip and fall” lawsuits.

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In February 2025, a small freshwater stream in Newmarket, Ont., was saltier than the ocean. The source? Winter road salt, washing off local parking lots and highways into the Lake Simcoe watershed.

As a result, concentrations of chloride — one of two minerals that make up table salt — in Western Creek exceeded 26,000 milligrams per litre of water. Meanwhile seawater typically sits at 19,400 milligrams of chloride per litre of water, according to the local conservation authority. 

For Christopher Wellen, an environmental scientist focused on hydrology and associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, this finding was not surprising: the Simcoe region, and many others across southern Ontario, have big salt problems. 

“It washes away from the roads, but it doesn’t just disappear,” Wellen said. “It goes where the water goes — that’s our groundwater, it’s our lakes, it’s our rivers — and has effects there.” 

For decades, the concentration of road salt in Lake Simcoe has been on the rise: 120,000 tonnes of it are used by communities in the watershed annually, Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority has reported. That amounts to roughly 227 kilograms of salt per person in the region every year.

Heavy salting in winter is not unusual, but Lake Simcoe has been monitored for decades, so it can act as a case study of exactly what happens when this much road salt is being applied. And it illuminates the environmental impact across the province where high-traffic areas, surrounded by cities, towns and a dense network of roadways, are inundated with salt.

Road salt and fresh water

Road salt is primarily made up of sodium chloride and is used to remove ice from roadways in the winter. But oversalting has widespread impacts on ecosystems, harming aquatic life and depleting biodiversity year-round.

“Every organism that lives in streams and rivers and lakes … has tolerances for all sorts of things like temperature fluctuations and salt fluctuations,” Wellen said. “If the water becomes too salty, they can find it really difficult to reproduce and thrive and continue to exist, basically.”

All this chloride does not break down, or simply wash away. It accumulates over time. 

“It’s quite possible that, if things don’t change, the food web could be quite affected,” Wellen added. The problem starts at the bottom of the food chain, he said, and makes its way up.

Since fish are mobile, they can generally avoid areas with high salt concentrations. The pronounced impacts are on the more stationary species, like critters that live in riverbeds. They also make up the base of the food chain, so when they are unable to survive the salty water, organisms higher up lose their food supply.

The Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority says on its website that winter salt has become a topic of “great concern” in the watershed, particularly because there isn’t an effective way to remove it. And Lake Simcoe, the largest lake wholly in southern Ontario, supplies drinking water for hundreds of thousands of residents — with hundreds of thousands more relying on groundwater aquifers in the watershed.

How salty is Lake Simcoe?

In Canada, the federal government provides long- and short-term guidelines for exposure to chloride before aquatic life is affected. At a concentration of 640 milligrams of chloride per litre of water for as little as 24 hours, aquatic life could be severely affected. For longer-term exposure, concentrations beyond 120 milligrams of chloride​ per litre of water would see harm to aquatic life such as a fish species declining over time.

David Lembcke, director of watershed science and monitoring at Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority, jokingly equates the latter threshold to a pack-a-day cigarette habit: “You’re going to have long-term impacts from that. There are some sensitive biota in the lake that will probably have reproductive, developmental, long-term impacts at those levels.” 

The authority produced a report more than a decade ago that already showed chloride concentrations were impacting these aquatic species in 64 per cent of the Lake Simcoe watershed.

In the lake itself, the concentration in February was around 61 milligrams of chloride​ per litre of water, Lembcke said, which is about half of the long-term exposure guideline set by the province. But that level has been steadily increasing by 0.7 milligrams of chloride per litre of water annually, according to the conservation authority. Elsewhere in the watershed, especially in tributaries in urban areas like Hotchkiss Creek and West Holland River, concentrations regularly exceed both guidelines, Lembcke said, and long after winter ends.

“We have this incredibly persistent, relentless increasing trend in lake [salt] concentrations,” Lembcke said. “Certainly the potential is there: if we don’t curb the amount of salt that we’re using, drinking water could be impacted.”

For drinking water, the Ontario objective is 250 milligrams of chloride​ per litre of water, but this is based on taste, not health considerations. For people who need to limit their sodium intake for things like high blood pressure, or kidney or liver diseases, Health Canada recommends that salt in water shouldn’t exceed 20 milligrams per litre.

In Waterloo, Ont., groundwater and consequently drinking water has already been impacted; given high concentrations in some areas, the city has to mix groundwater from different wells to average out chloride levels across the region. They’ve campaigned hard for curbing road salt use, since current water and wastewater treatment doesn’t remove salt, and the municipality explains on their website that removing it requires expensive, energy-intensive treatment. And that would mean higher water costs for the community.

How do you solve a problem like road salt?

While some communities look to solutions such as replacements for road salt, they also carry their own challenges: alternatives like beet juice or sodium acetate can be prohibitively expensive, and their long-term effects on ecosystems aren’t entirely known. 

Some experts and activists are looking to stop the problem at its source. Commercial parking lots are among the biggest culprits for oversalting, likely since they are liable for any injury that occurs on snow or ice on their properties.

“The problem that we keep seeing is that small businesses or big parking lots are oversalting, and it’s a perverse incentive structure where they feel like they have to do it to protect themselves against the slip and fall [lawsuits],” Jonathan Scott, executive director of the Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition, said. Scott is chair of the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority and a Bradford West Gwillimbury councillor.

“It’s not any safer. It’s worse for the environment. It’s worse for small businesses in terms of increased costs,” he said.

Proponents including Scott and Lembcke are arguing to modernize the law by offering limited liability, or a stronger defence against being sued, to those businesses who get an accepted certification such as Smart About Salt, and learn how to implement best salting practices for public safety and the environment alike. 

“If you’re following best practices and if you’re doing the right thing as a winter maintenance operator, that should be a defence for the operator and the property owner against slip and fall claims,” Scott said. “It seems like such a simple pro-business, pro-environment legal reform that wouldn’t cost us anything.” 

Scott points to New Hampshire, a state with comparable winter conditions to Ontario, as an example. The state reduced its salt pollution by 25 to 45 per cent by granting limited liability protection to certified commercial salt applicators. 

Wellen and his team have done modelling studies to see what would happen if a legal reform like this was adopted in the Lake Simcoe area; he said the results are promising, finding it could decrease the concentrations in the lake significantly by the end of the century.

But the province, who would have to make that regulatory change, has yet to sign on.

“It seems to be one of those problems that’s entirely of our own making, in which case it should be something that we can fix,” Lembcke said. “I’m optimistic that it’s something that we can address.”

— With files from Fatima Syed

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The cold snap held its grip on southern Ontario for weeks. On the shores of Lake Erie, some speculated this could be the year the ice makes it all the way across — something that hasn’t happened in three decades.

Erie, the shallowest of the Great Lakes, typically sees the most ice cover. Still, the most recent full freeze-up was in 1996, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data.

On a Sunday in early February, as ice cover crept over 95 per cent, locals and visitors braved frigid temperatures to look out across the frozen surface. 

Among them was photographer Carlos Osorio, who captured the lake and the people who set out across it — on foot, studded-tire bicycle or all-terrain vehicle. Wind had sculpted blowing snow into rippling waves, as if the water, on a blustery summer day, suddenly stood still.

“When you think about water freezing, you think about smooth ice, and then you come here and the ice almost looks like frozen waves,” Frank said. “You can just imagine the water swelling up and down, but it’s not, it’s just frozen.”

“This is exceptional,” Gerald Meyering said, marveling at the amount of ice and snow on the lake, compared to recent mild winters.

— With files from Carlos Osorio

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.

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.

Table of contents

• What are small modular reactors, or SMRs? 
• How much power does an SMR produce and for whom? 
• What is Ontario Power Generation? 
• How much will it cost Ontario taxpayers to build the first SMR? 
• When will the first SMR be operational?
• So where is Ontario going to get the enriched uranium needed for small modular reactors? 
• Who wants Ontario’s SMRs?
• How does Lake Ontario, and water in general, factor into the SMRs at Darlington? 
• What will we do with the waste produced by small modular reactors in Ontario?  
• How do SMRs fit into Ontario’s other nuclear plans? 
• If Ontario has never built an SMR before, will it actually be built? 

In January, Ontario Energy Minister Stephen Lecce told a room full of business and energy officials that communities across the province have been “petitioning us for a small modular reactor.” 

The emerging nuclear technology is exactly what it sounds like: essentially a smaller nuclear reactor, often referred to as an SMR, that can produce enough electricity for up to 300,000 homes. And it’s all anyone in Ontario’s energy space can talk about. It’s poised to be a major facet of the province and country’s plan to become an “energy superpower.” 

There’s a simple case for expanding Ontario’s already robust nuclear fleet. We desperately need more clean, reliable, around-the-clock electricity supply to satisfy our thirst for artificial intelligence, electric cars and all the things we’ll be plugging in over the coming decades. 

The province is betting nuclear energy will satisfy the bulk of our power demand, and so is Canada. The two levels of government have promised billions of dollars toward the country’s (and North America’s) first small modular reactor power plant. The project is under construction at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Bowmanville, Ont., just over an hour’s drive east of Toronto, and led by the Crown corporation Ontario Power Generation. The plan is to build four of these reactors at Darlington over the next decade. 

The catch: we’ve never built a small modular reactor before. 

Both Russia and China have operational small modular reactors, while Argentina has a pilot under construction. But Ontario would be first in the G7 to build one.That doesn’t seem to have fazed the government — provincial or federal. Prime Minister Mark Carney has referred the Darlington New Nuclear project to his Major Projects Office for consideration to be fast-tracked. That means federal officials could support the financial and licensing needs of all four small modular reactors. 

Here’s everything you need to know about Ontario’s pursuit of small modular reactors, or SMRs. 

What are small modular reactors, or SMRs? 

They’re like traditional nuclear reactors, but, well, smaller in both the amount of power they produce and their physical size. An SMR and its components can range from the size of a shipping container to a football field. 

But they produce power in the same way, splitting radioactive uranium atoms into smaller elements. This process releases heat that is used to turn water into steam, which drives a turbine, producing electricity.

That similarity is one of the reasons Ontario Power Generation is confident in their plan to build a first-of-its-kind reactor at Darlington, with contractor GE Vernova Hitachi — the small modular reactor is a scaled-down version of an existing nuclear reactor model (the tenth generation of it, in fact), Subo Sinnathamby, Ontario Power Generation’s chief projects officer, told The Narwhal

While the physics are largely the same, small modular reactors are easier to build than a traditional reactor. “They’re almost like Legos: pre-made bits that come out of the factory and are put together on site,” Kirk Atkinson, associate professor and associate industrial research chair in Ontario Tech University’s department of energy and nuclear engineering, said. 

Atkinson, who is also director of the university’s Centre for Small Modular Reactors, says this kind of simplification allows small modular reactors to be produced at reduced costs and much more quickly than full-scale nuclear.

But while traditional nuclear reactors use uranium, a fuel Canada is the world’s second-largest producer and exporter of, small modular reactors require enriched uranium, which Atkinson likened to concentrated orange juice. Canada doesn’t have any of it in-house, and that’s a hurdle Ontario is trying to get over quickly. More on that below. 

How much power does an SMR produce and for whom? 

A single small modular reactor at Darlington will produce 300 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to power 300,000 homes. 

The lower capacity and size means they make sense in places with smaller populations, everywhere from rural, remote Ontario to Saskatchewan, helping them move away from diesel generators. They can also be used to provide independent or backup power for industrial facilities, mines or data centres, assuming regulation permits this. 

Unlike small modular reactors in remote communities or independent uses, Darlington’s reactors will be tied into Ontario’s power grid.

What is Ontario Power Generation? 

The provincial Crown corporation, often known as OPG, has built and currently operates a significant portion of the nuclear generators in the province. 

Atkinson said it is “the only entity in Canada that is large enough and wealthy enough and skilled enough to take a project like a small modular reactor and be the proving ground of a nation, be a proving ground of the western world.”

For more than a decade, Ontario Power Generation has had an empty site near its Darlington nuclear facility licensed for new nuclear builds. That site is now being used to build the first of four small modular reactors, technically known as the GE Hitachi Boiling Water Reactor X-300 (or the BWRX-300). The full-scale nuclear version of this reactor is in use in the United States.  

“We had a leg up on other nations because we already had a site suitable for this,” Atkinson said. “[Ontario Power Generation] was ahead of the times.”

How much will it cost Ontario taxpayers to build the first SMR? 

Absolute bucketloads. 

Initial forecasts suggest the first small modular reactor may cost $6.1 billion, plus another $1.6 billion for systems around it that will service all four once complete.

In total, Ontario Power Generation anticipates the four reactors at Darlington to cost $20.9 billion.

The federal government’s arm’s-length investment vehicle, the Canada Growth Fund, has given the first leg of the project $2 billion, while the province is putting forward $1 billion through its Building Ontario Fund. 

Both governments say these investments will be worth it because Ontario’s small modular reactors will create 18,000 jobs during construction and 3,700 jobs during operation. They also predict the project will contribute $38.5 billion to Canada’s gross domestic product through its construction and continued operation over 65 years. 

While it looks like the cost of the Darlington project will be borne by taxpayers, the province has noted it is “exploring potential financial instruments that would benefit ratepayers, and in parallel, [Ontario Power Generation] continues to explore other optimal financing arrangements.”

For now, the Crown corporation has asked the Ontario Energy Board to consider permitting it to nearly double the cost of nuclear power for ratepayers to help recoup the very high costs of building the small modular reactors. This follows a rule change made by the Doug Ford government allowing electricity rate increases for generating infrastructure that hasn’t been built yet. We’ll have to wait and see what the independent regulator decides.

When will the first SMR be operational?

If all goes well, 2030. 

“We have a licence to construct. We don’t have a licence to operate, yet,” Sinnathamby, of Ontario Power Generation, said.  

The power to grant that is in the hands of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which will greenlight the technology once it’s built, only if it meets all environmental and safety standards. 

It also depends on whether we manage to secure enough enriched uranium to operate them. 

So where is Ontario going to get the enriched uranium needed for small modular reactors? 

Maybe the U.S. Maybe France. 

In its 2024 fall economic statement, the federal government, led by then-prime minister Justin Trudeau, said it intended to backstop up to $500 million in enriched nuclear fuel purchase contracts from allied countries to support small modular reactor operators.

Sinnathamby said Ontario Power Generation has “a very diverse partnership to ensure we have a strong supply of enriched fuel.” Canada has an abundance of uranium, while the United States has facilities to produce the refined form. Sinnathamby noted the American company producing that enriched uranium is a subsidiary of GE Vernova Hitachi, which is building the SMR technology, and so is very invested in the project’s success and that supply chain. 

Nevertheless, in light of the U.S. trade tensions, Sinnathamby said Ontario Power Generation has also signed a deal with French company Orano to garner enriched uranium. 

“We’re quite comfortable and confident around fuel security and supply,” Sinnathamby said. 

Who wants Ontario’s SMRs?

If you ask Lecce … everyone? 

In 2022, the governments of Ontario, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Alberta agreed to a joint strategic plan to collectively build and deploy small modular reactors. Ontario and Nova Scotia have made a similar agreement. Some of these provinces are “starting from scratch,” George Christidis, president and CEO of the Canadian Nuclear Association, said, which is what makes Ontario’s experience and expertise important. 

In the past year, Lecce has been on a whirlwind of international trips to secure deals both to deploy small modular reactors and support them, everywhere from New York to Poland. 

Ontario Power Generation has also been inundated with requests to visit Darlington to see the SMR site, Sinnathamby said, adding, “I joke that one of my execs is on full-time tour duty because of the number of visitors we have.” That has included representatives from European countries, as well as U.S. government agencies. 

How does Lake Ontario, and water in general, factor into the SMRs at Darlington? 

The three major nuclear sites in Ontario are all close to Great Lakes, which Atkinson said act as “very large bathtubs of water” that can be used to cool the reactors. 

To that end, Sinnathamby said the small modular reactor site in Darlington will include a tunnel into Lake Ontario to bring in water for cooling, “so that wouldn’t be different from any other technology, per se.”

What will differ is the volume of water needed; that depends on the eventual size of the reactor, the number of components and how many are built.

What will we do with the waste produced by small modular reactors in Ontario?  

We’re not sure, but everyone is confident there will be a plan when they’re operational. 

“Nuclear waste is very securely managed and regulated in Canada,” Christidis said. “There’s a strong and proven safety standard in this industry.” 

This question ultimately depends on the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, a non-profit established by Ontario Power Generation, New Brunswick Power Corporation and Hydro-Québec and empowered by the federal government to create a plan for nuclear waste management.

The organization has long been tasked with finding a site for nuclear waste produced by traditional reactors, and last year chose Ignace, Ont., as the site for a repository. 

But waste produced by small modular reactors isn’t included in the plan for Ignace, and they may produce higher amounts of nuclear waste per unit of energy than traditional reactors. 

Sinnathamby, who sits on the board of the waste management organization, expects robust consultation on what to do with small modular reactor waste before it is operational. “It could potentially go to Ignace,” she said, but either way, the organization is mandated to find a solution for the waste. 

How do SMRs fit into Ontario’s other nuclear plans? 

Ontario is currently in the midst of either refurbishing or expanding all three of its major nuclear plants, which collectively provide more than 50 per cent of the province’s electricity. 

The government has also directed Ontario Power Generation to explore the possibility of building a new nuclear facility in Port Hope, Ont. If built, it would be the second nuclear facility built since 1993 — only after Darlington’s small modular reactors.

If Ontario has never built an SMR before, will it actually be built? 

Many in politics and the industry vigorously believe so. 

But as with all new technology emerging in the energy transition — from carbon capture to hydrogen — a lot remains to be seen. 

“We’re kind of at the beginning stage of this journey,” Atkinson said. “It’s only once we’ve built some and we’ve had the chance to stand back and look at it will we be able to provide better answers.”

Christidis is resolute. “It isn’t just hype. It’s actually very real,” he said. “That’s in the sense of real projects, real jobs, real investments. It’s a success story in the making, here and internationally.” 

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