A Contested Waterscape: The Public’s Diminished Participation in Ontario’s Water Management Planning Process

Abstract

Guelph, Ontario, is one of a few cities in Canada that relies solely on groundwater for drinking water. City officials anticipate that the municipality will experience a water deficit in the near future. In response to water security issues residents have actively engaged in the state-sanctioned water source protection committee. This article explores the water management planning process upheld by Ontario’s Clean Water Act, 2006, and examines the question: Is the Clean Water Act’s participatory mode to water governance inclusive of “environmental, health, and other interests of the public”? The analysis of this question engages with the political ecology literature and, in particular, Linton and Budds’s three-part hydrosocial cycle framework. It is argued that the technology of regulatory law (i.e., the Clean Water Act, 2006) constructs the power dynamics and social relations within the state-sanctioned water committee resulting in the weakening of the environmental interests expressed by the public.