Surface Water Quality

Although there is a considerable amount of historical surface water quality information available for Ontario, a reduction of data acquisition by the provincial government over the past decade will be a constraint on planning for growth in Central Ontario. For example, from a historical peak of more than 900 stations, the Ministry of the Environment's Water Quality Monitoring Network had declined to less than 250 stations by the year 2000.¹⁸ A number of new stations are scheduled to be added to the network in 2002, but there is still a significant loss of capacity to provide the surface water quality information needed to plan for substantial population and business growth.

Another factor to consider when planning for growth is that the population density may increase, for example, from 31.7 to 37.7 people per acre in the City of Toronto.¹⁹ If so, the effects of this increased density of people will have to be taken into account in plans for water supply and sewage treatment in Toronto and other areas where infilling and re-development are expected to occur.