The Ottawa Citizen
Tuesday, October 15, 2002

It does not make any sense to allow a golf course to extract a huge quantity of water from the Jock River when that river is sometimes nearly dry in places.

The Riverbend Golf and Country Club, on Franktown Road near Munster, is asking the Ministry of the Environment for a long-term permit to take up to 1.1 million litres of water from the Jock River each day. The water would be drawn between April 15 and Oct. 1 for the club's recently expanded irrigation system. The golf club currently has a permit that expires in April 2004 that allows about 200,000 litres a day to be used.

The Ministry of the Environment is accepting written submissions on this application until Saturday. A decision will be made by a director under the Ontario Water Resources Act; that decision can be appealed to the Environmental Review Tribunal, which can hold public hearings on the issue. Any water-taking over 50,000 litres a day requires approval by the government.

The fact is, the Jock River is a very small river and the government of Ontario should be extremely cautious in allowing large quantities of water to be taken from it. Allowing daily extraction of up to 1.1 million litres would not be cautious.

There are huge swings in the volume of water in the Jock River, depending on whether there's a lot of rain or snow. In the springtime, there's lots of water in the Jock. In the heat of summer there's much less. There are also great differences in the volume of water available from place to place, depending on the geography.

Water levels near the golf course have been very low. The Rideau Valley Conservation Authority did some field work in the Jock a couple of weeks ago in response to the golf course application. The authority found only 691,200 litres a day flowing near the course.

Bruce Reid, of the conservation authority, says that in certain sections the Jock River is little more than an "intermittent stream." During dry periods, it is in places "really just a series of pools of standing water separated by stretches of dry river bed."

With the conservation authority pointing out such a water-deprived state of the river, the province should pay attention and not allow massive water takings.

These water issues are likely to become even more contentious in the years to come. Golf courses are springing up all over the Ontario countryside, and they typically like to have lush, green, manicured grass, and that takes tonnes of water to grow.

At the same time, there is growing concern in the province about the state of our supply of fresh water. Not long ago, we thought the reservoir of clean water was limitless. Now, with periodic bouts of drought and serious problems in the quality of water, we're much less certain about that supply. If fresh water is a limited, precious resource, do we want a lot of it diverted to golf courses?

Rivers are the common property of the people of Ontario. We have a responsibility to do what we can to ensure that they remain healthy, so that fish habitat can be preserved and the water shared along the course of the river.