Tag Archives: Eastern Lake Erie Regional Conservation Authority

07.11.26
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‘We do not require conservation authorities to protect, preserve, and conserve what we need to environmentally in the province’ – Leith Coghlin, EnPointe Public Affairs

Shortly after posting last week’s column, the following comment appeared on the City Scope Facebook page.
“That and they are unmeasured, anti-democratic, and fail in their original mandates. 63 subnational jurisdictions in North America, every one of them, save Ontario, get by without conservation authorities.
“And several have far better conservation outcomes that are actually measured, monitored, and reported upon.”
The comment was posted by Leith Coghlin, a St. Thomas resident who is Managing Director of EnPointe Public Affairs, a London-based advocacy and public policy analysis firm.
Coghlin released a response to Conservation Ontario’s comments in November, 2020 regarding proposed changes to conservation authorities.
Last week, we spoke with Morgaine Griffin, chair of the Catfish Creek Conservation Authority, on the province’s plan to consolidate the existing 36 conservation authorities into 9 regional bodies. You can read that item here.

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07.04.26
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‘I don’t think there was a single conservation authority that wanted to be forcibly combined with any of their neighbours’ – Catfish Creek Conservation Authority board chair Morgaine Griffin

To Premier Doug Ford, it would seem that conservation authorities are annoyances that just get in the way of the province’s land developers.
And so, it is full speed ahead with consolidating the current 36 authorities into nine regional authorities.
Under the original consolidation scheme, much of southwestern Ontario would have been lumped into the Lake Erie Regional Conservation Authority, which would have covered watersheds draining into Lake Erie, including the Thames, Grand, and Sydenham systems, supporting agriculture, industry, and shoreline communities.
In November of last year, we spoke with Dusty Underhill, General Manager of the Catfish Creek Conservation Authority, who conceded the word ‘consolidation’ is certainly not music to his ears.

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