Thousands of people around Lake Simcoe receive their drinking water from our lake, and the broad Nottawasaga River watershed that surrounds much of it. Whatever goes into these water bodies affects whatever depends on them - which means it's time to protect them because nature can only do so much. Some of the water we use is also hard to see since it is hidden underground in aquifers or nature's reservoirs, but the green spaces that feed them are in danger of being lost forever.

It's important to protect the quality and safety of this drinking water. We're lucky to have it in such abundance, but we won't have it unless we take steps to protect it.

When we pave over green space, we prevent rainwater from recycling itself naturally into our water system. Worse, instead of clean rain water replenishing our water supply the pollution - oil, gasoline, chemicals, you name it - that is found on pavement is funneled into our water supply. As more development takes place on sensitive green space around our important water bodies, more pollution ends up in our drinking water.