Delay in renewing Ontario water testing program leaves participants on edge

Jonathan Migneault · CBC News

· Posted: May 14, 2025 6:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 12 minutes ago

A volunteer-led programme that helps show the wellness of hundreds of lakes crossed Ontario has been connected clasp due to the fact that statement with the state has not yet been renewed.

For 30 years the Federation of Ontario Cottagers' Associations has partnered with the provincial authorities to tally the Lake Partner Program.

Last year, 629 volunteers with the programme collected samples from 546 Ontario lakes astatine 917 antithetic sites (some larger lakes person aggregate sampling sites).

Those samples are past delivered to the Dorset Environmental Science Centre, which has a Ministry of the Environment laboratory to trial the h2o samples for phosphorus, calcium chloride and h2o clarity.

The Federation of Ontario Cottagers' Associations says its astir caller five-year statement with the state ended successful March 2025.

"The 2025 information is astatine hazard unless an statement with MECP [Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks] is confirmed now," the enactment said successful an update. 

Ontario Ministry of the Environment spokesperson Gary Wheeler told CBC News successful an email that the state has not cancelled the program, however.

"We mean to enactment with our partners to instrumentality renewed agreements for the 2025 season," Wheeler said.

Elizabeth Favot, an aquatic ecologist astatine Laurentian University and unpaid with the programme connected Lake Nipissing, said phosphorous levels, successful particular, tin archer researchers if a water is astatine hazard of issues similar algae blooms.

She said galore technological papers person utilized information from the programme for their findings.

"The unpaid hours going retired to cod the samples is what makes this programme truthful almighty and however we tin show specified a ample fig of sites," said Favot.

She said it would not beryllium imaginable for authorities scientists to trial the aforesaid fig of lakes connected an yearly ground without the program.

The City of Greater Sudbury, for example, has been monitoring 68 lakes wrong the metropolis limits acknowledgment to the program.