Environmental groups are praising a proposed law that aims to protect the sources of Ontario’s drinking water. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:
Transcript
Environmental groups are praising a proposed law that aims to protect the sources of
Ontario’s drinking water. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:
In the year 2000, seven people died after drinking tainted water in Walkerton, Ontario.
Ontario passed laws to improve the testing of tap water.
Now the province is proposing a new law to help prevent the sources of drinking water
from becoming polluted in the first place.
It plans to create special committees that will oversee protection in the different regions.
Paul Muldoon of the Canadian Environmental Law Association describes it as a step
forward.
“If it’s completed in the direction its going it would be one of the best around and
certainly a thousand times better than we had before Walkerton’s tragedy.”
However, Muldoon and others say the province still must find a way to fund these
protections. They want Ontario to introduce water meters so that industry and residents
pay for the water they use.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.