On May 18, the Ontario Minister of the Environment John Gerretsen introduced for first reading the Water Opportunities and Water Conservation Act, 2010 ("Act" or "Bill 72"). The proposed Act is designed to incent innovation, create economic opportunities, reinforce water infrastructure and promote water conservation. The proposed Act and its complementary initiatives attempt to achieve three key outcomes:

  • Making Ontario the North American leader in developing and selling new technologies and services for water conservation and treatment;
  • Creating an integrated approach to water infrastructure planning to achieve long-term sustainability;
  • Establishing the more efficient use of water through the provision of specific incentives for municipalities, including:
    1. Optimizing systems and improving water conservation.
    2. Identifying opportunities to demonstrate and implement new and emerging Ontario water technologies and services.
    3. Defining measures and targets to demonstrate progress.

The proposed Act also aims to encourage efforts to significantly reduce Ontario's residential water use. It would:

  • Enable the government to bring in water efficiency labelling like the WaterSense program in the United States for appliances and consumer products such as faucets, showerheads, and rain sensors;
  • Allow the government to require standardized information about water use on water bills;
  • Enable government to demonstrate leadership through considering water conservation in procurement and through conservation planning by all public agencies.

Summary of the Water Opportunities Act:

The Act contains five schedules that describe new provisions and various amendments to specific other Acts. Part I of Schedule 1, describes the purposes of the act—to foster innovative water, waste water and storm water technologies and services in the public and private sectors, create conservation targets and to create economic opportunities for clean technology jobs. Part II, establishes a new corporation without share capital named the "Water Technology Acceleration Project". Key objects of this corporation include:

  • Assist in promoting the development of Ontario's water and waste water sectors;
  • Increase the capacity of these sectors to develop, test, demonstrate and commercialize innovative technologies;
  • Increase the capacity of the water and waste water sectors to expand their business opportunities nationally and internationally;
  • Provide a forum for governments, academic institutions, and the private sector to exchange information on how to make Ontario a leading jurisdiction in the development and commercialization of innovative water and waster water technologies.

Part III of the Act requires certain municipalities to prepare, approve and submit to the Minister of the Environment municipal water sustainability plans for municipal water services, waste water services and storm water services. The Minister may establish performance indicators and targets for those services which may be reviewed and evaluation by a regulated entity.

Part IV of the Act allows the making of regulations requiring public agencies including municipalities and government ministries to: prepare water conservation plans, achieve water conservation targets, ensure that goods and services or making capital investments to consider technologies to promote the efficient use of water resources.

Part V of the Act authorizes the making of regulations prescribing information that must be included on or with the municipal water bill.

Part VI of the Act authorizes the Minister of the Environment to at least once every three years to prepare a report on various matters related to the Act.

Schedule 2 of the Bill amends the Building Code Act, 1992 to require the Minster to initiate reviews of the code with reference to standards for water conservation. Schedule 3 of the Bill amends the Capital Investment Plan Act, 1993 to include new objects for the Ontario Clean Water Agency. For example, the agency would be responsible for assisting municipalities, the government of Ontario and others to provide water and sewage works by financing, planning, developing, building and operating those works and services.

Schedules 4 and 5 make amendments to the Green Energy Act 2009 and the Water Resources Act to ensure water use standards, adoption of new technologies and conservation criteria are taken into account by government facilities.

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