Muskoka Watershed Council is seeking Community Round Table members

Muskoka Watershed Council is seeking individuals from sectors across the Muskoka River Watershed to join the Community Round Table to ensure Muskoka’s societal, economic, and environmental interests are considered in a future Integrated Watershed Management Plan for the entire Muskoka River Watershed (from the Algonquin Highlands to Georgian Bay).

What is Integrated Watershed Management?

Integrated Watershed Management (IWM) is a method of land-use planning using a watershed scale. In Muskoka, land-use is currently managed based on political boundaries (municipal boundaries). Managing the entire watershed as a whole means consistent land-use policies across all jurisdictions. Implementing Integrated Watershed Management in Muskoka can address issues like flooding while creating more sustainable communities.

What will the Community Round Table do?

Members of the Community Round Table will represent sectors, ensuring that community interests and perspectives are considered. For example, it’s important to consider the needs of the development industry, including builders, developers, and realtors, to ensure that the economic prosperity of Muskoka is maintained and that there is enough housing for all. It is equally important to consider the environment’s needs through the perspectives of environmental non-government organizations and Indigenous communities.

Members of the Community Round Table will provide their sector-specific views on land-use planning, water quality, flooding, building climate resilience, and other watershed issues. Perspectives are shared through monthly 1.5 hour meetings (currently via zoom). The end goal of the Community Round Table is to produce a report incorporating the community’s needs and interests on watershed management. This will be delivered by early 2023. This report will inform a future Integrated Watershed Management Plan for the Muskoka region.

I can represent a sector. How do I get involved?

Learn more about the CRT and how to become a member at https://www.muskokawatershed.org/blog/a-crt-is-needed-for-iwm/.

Learn more about IWM on the MWC website at https://www.muskokawatershed.org/programs/integrated-watershed-management/.

A Community Round Table is needed for Integrated Watershed Management

Muskoka Watershed Council is seeking individuals interested in joining the Community Round Table on Integrated Watershed Management for the Muskoka River Watershed. You can become a part of the process of building better environmental management and land-use planning!

Integrated Watershed Management (IWM) is the most promising option for protecting the unique natural assets that anchor the lifestyle and economy of those who live and vacation in our region. With climate change increasing the variability and severity of weather and causing rapid changes in the natural environment, environmental management and land-use planning are now more complex tasks than they used to be. However, many decisions are currently based on local political boundaries.

To retain the high-quality environment so vital to our economy and to the quality of life of our residents, we need more effective management policies and procedures than those now in place. Many decisions and management actions require an ecosystem context, including some climate actions (e.g., forest management, infrastructure renewal), acting on problems such as calcium, salt and phosphorus, and locations and types of waterfront or urban development. The logical scale and process for making these decisions is the watershed and IWM.

IWM incorporates and balances three key components of a community: economic viability, environmental resilience, and societal needs. IWM was the key recommendation in the Muskoka Watershed Advisory Group’s June 2020 report to the Ontario Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks. The Minister’s positive response, and the associated transfer of funds to The District Municipality of Muskoka (DMM), provide some of the tools to begin making IWM a reality. Now we need a Community Round Table (CRT) to drive this process forward with the support and engagement of all sectors of our community; Muskoka Watershed Council has been charged with building it.

Members of the CRT will represent specific community sectors ensuring that all perspectives are considered and that the IWM Plan ultimately produced will reflect the needs and aspirations of residents of the Muskoka River Watershed, from its origins in the Algonquin Highlands south and west to Georgian Bay.

The provincial initiative has enabled DMM to commence several projects that help build the essential baseline information and knowledge concerning water quantity, water quality and land use across the Muskoka River Watershed. This phase will be completed early in 2023. One of the first tasks of the CRT will be to evaluate and integrate the results of these projects, identifying knowledge gaps remaining and recommending studies to fill those gaps.

To succeed, the CRT requires active participation by representatives of all sectors across the watershed to capture the diversity of our perspectives: various economic sectors, municipalities, local communities, lake associations and indigenous peoples. The CRT’s overall task is to consolidate the perspectives of the representatives into building a plan for the implementation of IWM as the basis for governance of the environment and land-use planning within the Muskoka River Watershed and to continue educating and informing the community about IWM.

IWM is sophisticated and will be challenging to implement, especially given the governance systems in parts of North America where it is initiated without a regulatory body such as a conservation authority. MWC believes the benefits of IWM justify the effort needed. The CRT will explore the costs and benefits of IWM while being informed by the insights that representatives from different sectors of our community can provide. We anticipate a major report to the community late in 2023 providing a plan for moving forward towards a more effectively managed future for this region.

The CRT must be representative in order to succeed. If you are interested in participating, please fill out the inquiry form below and we will reach out to you.

Community Round Table Inquiry Form

Municipal Official Plan Recommendations

Muskoka Watershed Council (MWC) has developed a series of 36 recommendations for consideration during a municipality’s Official Plan (OP) review process. Our recommendations generally relate to integrated watershed management (IWM), climate change, natural assets, transportation, energy efficiency, and innovative environmental approaches.

These recommendations are drawn from extensive MWC work and research on how to manage and protect the watersheds of Muskoka, including, for example, our 2020 paper on Integrated Watershed Management and our 2016 report “Planning for Climate Change in Muskoka“.

MWC understands that land-use planning is one of the most important tools at a municipality’s disposal to protect watershed health in the long term. Through our own strategic planning processes, MWC issued a community-wide survey in 2020 to identify environmental priorities across Muskoka and 79% of individuals surveyed placed land-use planning among their top four priorities. Recognizing the fundamental importance of watershed health to our economy and community well-being, MWC recommends that municipalities adopt an “environment first” stance in land-use planning.

Coordinating land-use planning among the municipalities sharing the same watersheds is a key feature of IWM. Accordingly, MWC is making the same recommendations to all municipalities in our watersheds, while understanding that each will be at different points in their OP review cycle.

MWC expects IWM to evolve in Muskoka over the coming years and with the support of the provincial and regional governments. The attached document should be considered an interim submission while key IWM initiatives are advanced by those levels of government and while MWC is assisting the Province and District of Muskoka on various foundational projects related to IWM. Notable among these, in their relevance to municipal planning, are projects on land-use policy review, floodplain mapping, and natural capital inventory. These and others are slated for completion in early 2023. MWC expects to use the findings of these projects in updating our recommendations relating to land-use planning.

MWC hopes that municipalities will take the time to review, consider, and hopefully implement these recommendations.