This proposal strips essential environmental safeguards from large, high-density sewage systems that will service concentrated seasonal worker populations—up to 200 people per farm—by shifting oversight from the Ontario Water Resources Act (OWRA) and MECP’s Environmental Compliance Approval (ECA) process to the Building Code.
This is not streamlining—this is deregulation of systems designed to handle up to 50,000 L/day, equivalent to a small municipal wastewater plant, without the technical review, monitoring, or site-specific risk assessment required under the OWRA.
This change introduces unacceptable risks to groundwater, surface water, fisheries, private wells, aquifers, and rural communities, and is entirely out of step with Ontario’s climate-change realities, which demand more oversight—not less.