Drinking Water Source Protection - Saugeen website
Organization Information:
- Organization Name:
- Saugeen valley Conservation Authority
- City & State:
- Hanover,
- Ontario
- Organization Website:
- http://www.waterprotection.ca
- Organization's Mission Statement
- Mission Statement: Providing leadership to engage the entire community in developing comprehensive, responsible solutions to protect water resources. Guiding principles: We value: . Comprehensive, science-based research . Recognizing and engaging all members of the community as valued stakeholders . Informed decision makers through communication, education and responsiveness to community enquiries . Being open and transparent . Sustainable and long-term decision making
Submission Information
- Impact Essay
- Water is critical to all aspects of our lives and it is important that we ensure there is a safe and reliable source of water for all our uses - now and in the future. Drinking Water Source Protection is a resource planning process that aims to keep sources of drinking water safe and usable. Source protection is the first barrier in providing clean water to our communities and is a key recommendation from the inquiry that followed the Walkerton water tragedy. Back in May 2000, water contaminated by a virulent strain of E. coli bacteria made its way into the municipal water system of the community of Walkerton, Ontario. Within days, seven people had died and thousands of others had become ill from drinking the contaminated water. The province of Ontario passed the Clean Water Act and local Source Protection Committees have been established to develop Source Protection Plans. The Plans will identify vulnerable areas around water supplies and the activities that may pose a threat to the quality or quantity of drinking water. The Saugeen, Grey Sauble, Northern Bruce Peninsula Source Protection Region covers more than 8400 square kilometres and includes the community of Walkerton. Residents of this region are very interested in the Source Protection work and want to be informed. Public participation in the process is very important. The Adobe products that are used by our program staff are a vital tool in all our communication efforts. Through TechSoup, we acquired the Adobe Web Bundle. All of our web, publication and other creative needs can be done in-house by our staff. Traffic on our website has grown to more than 500 hits per day. We are educating the public about the importance of water and what they can do to protect it. The public can find out what is happening in the planning process and learn about ways that they can participate. Our website, www.waterprotection.ca, is managed with Dreamweaver. The Help files and built-in tools made it very easy to transition the site to utilize CSS. Photoshop was used to create the header background images , resize photos and touch up images. Flash allowed us to create puzzles and other interesting features to make the site appealing to a broader age range. By regulation, we must post certain documents onto our website where they are accessible to the public. Adobe Acrobat is the natural choice for the file format because of its universal usage and the ability to size the document appropriately for high-speed and dial-up internet users. Finally, Illustrator is excellent for such a wide range of design uses. We have created diagrams, image maps, townscapes, banners, advertisements, exhibits, brochures and many other publications. As well, the Illustrator files can easily be exported for use by our printer or as image for our website. Adobe products and TechSoup have made a great contribution in our organization’s work of protecting drinking water sources now and in the future.
- Submission Category
- Environmental Impact Other Media
