Water is a shared resource and therefore collaboration is essential to carefully manage it. We support and facilitate a collaborative Water Management Plan with municipalities, provincial and federal government agencies, and First Nations to discuss water management challenges and to develop best-value solutions.
The Plan is similar to a municipal master plan in that it is a system-wide, or watershed-wide approach to address overall needs and to achieve common goals. It provides a framework for collective and collaborative action on water management that goes beyond municipal boundaries.
The goals for water management planning support communities, economies and ecosystems, and are to:
The Grand River has a long history of integrated water management planning. See the historic water management documents dating back to 1932.
A report card provides a simple "checkup" on watershed health. The report card tracks and reports on surface and groundwater quality and the conditions of forests and wetlands.
Read the Grand River Watershed Report Card.
Conservation Ontario provides an overview of the results across Ontario.
The State of Water Resources (2020)
To evaluate whether the actions that have been implemented have been making a difference in the watershed's water resources, a report was compiled to profile the current state of the resources.
Read the The Grand River Watershed: The State of Water Resources (5MB PDF).
Reporting on Actions (2014-2018)
Please note the following documents may not be accessible to people with disabilities. If you have a disability and require a document in an alternate format, please contact us.
16 partner agencies came together to update the Water Management Plan in 2014. It was endorsed by watershed municipalities, three provincial ministries, one federal department and Six Nations of the Grand River.
Read the full Grand River Water Management Plan (2014) (6MB PDF) or the Executive Summary (1MB PDF). Please note these documents may not be accessible to people with disabilities. If you have a disability and require a document in an alternate format, please contact us.
Many reports and studies supported the planning process.
Collaborative Water Management Planning
The GRCA continues to support and facilitate watershed water management through quarterly meetings with the Water Managers Working Group. This group is made up of senior managers of municipal water, wastewater, and stormwater utilities, First Nations and government water programs.
The group reports on the actions that their agency has committed to and discusses issues that cross municipal boundaries. Best-value solutions are sought to continuously improve water management in the Grand River watershed.
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