This is the website for the drinking water source protection program in the Maitland Valley and Ausable Bayfield source protection areas.
What is drinking water source protection?
Drinking water source protection is an Ontario public health initiative.
Source water protection helps to protect your municipal sources of drinking water.
New tools to protect municipal drinking water sources (such as groundwater and surface water from Lake Huron, through the Ontario Clean Water Act, 2006, include locally developed and provincially approved source protection plans.
How are we protecting drinking water sources?
The source protection committee in the Ausable Bayfield Maitland Valley Source Protection Region has developed practical and effective local plans that took effect in April of 2015.
These plans help to keep your water safe and clean.
Plan policies help you to keep chemicals, bacteria, pathogens and other pollution out of your drinking water.
It is much less expensive to protect drinking water through prevention than it is to replace a water supply that has been compromised.
This work, that we are doing together, adds a new barrier of protection for you – the first barrier of defence – source protection.
Other barriers of protection include the three Ts (Testing of water; Treatment of water; Training of water managers and staff) along with distribution systems and monitoring.
People undertaking certain activities, such as home heating oil storage or septic systems, in the most vulnerable wellhead protection areas (zones around municipal wells), are required to take measures to ensure they are doing what they need to do to protect water.
This website is to help you find out if you are in a vulnerable area, how plan policies apply to you, find out more and ask us questions, inform you of consultation opportunities for input, and how you can help keep local water sources safe and clean.
Contact us
Drinking water source protection staff members in the Maitland Valley and Ausable source protection areas encourage you to contact us with your questions.
Please phone 519-235-2610, 519-335-3557 or toll-free at 1-888-286-2610.
You may also email info@sourcewaterinfo.on.ca
Accessible Formats
Request for AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) Documentation in Alternative Format
c/o Ausable Bayfield Conservation
71108 Morrison Line,
RR 3 Exeter,
Ontario
N0M 1S5
