On November 3, 2015, after a long and tortured history, the province of Ontario's Great Lakes Protection Act, 2015 came into force. Initially developed in 2012, the Act formally requires the Minister of Environment and Climate Change to maintain Ontario's Great Lakes Strategy. The province just released its 2016 Progress Report on the Strategy.
The Report reviewed progress on six goals:
- Engaging and empowering communities
- Protecting water for human and ecological health
- Improving wetlands, beaches and coastal areas
- Enhancing understanding and adaptation
- Ensuring environmentally sustainable economic opportunities and innovation
The report is a summary of actions undertaken by the province in the last several years, including closing the coal fired plants, implementing the feed-in-tariff program for green energy development, approving 19 source water protection plans under the Clean Water Act, and keeping salt out of our rivers and streams.
A major issue in recent years is algal blooms. We thought we had addressed this problem with extensive phosphorous reductions in the 1970s. But harmful blue-green and nuisance algal blooms have been reappearing since the mid-1990s, with the 2015 harmful algal bloom in western lake Erie being the largest on record. The Great Lakes Protection Act requires the Minister to establish at least one target to assist in the reduction of blooms. This is in addition to the province's existing work under its 12-point plan on blue green algal blooms.
For anyone interested in the Great Lakes watershed, this is a must-read report.
The next progress report will be released in 2019.
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