Living right next to Lake Ontario with an abundance of natural areas, parks, forests, wetlands and creeks in our local municipalities, it is difficult to imagine life without clean water.  Since European settlement, our day to day living has impacted, and will continue to impact, the quality and quantity of water resources within Central Lake Ontario Conervation's watershed. Our communities, both urban and rural, boast strong agricultural, manufacturing, business, recreational and tourism industries, which place a further strain on our land and water resources.  As a growing community, our water requirements and need for more land will increase significantly in the future. 

In 2008, Central Lake Ontario Conservation (CLOCA) embarked on a Watershed Checkup project to determine the overall health of the natural land and water resources we find throughout our watersheds. What is a watershed you ask?  A watershed is an area of land upon which melting snow and rainwater drain into a common body of water like a creek, lake, pond or river.  You are actually reading this webpage from a watershed right now.  Homes, businesses, farms, forests, hamlets, towns and cities are all an integral part of a watershed.  Essentially we depend on our watersheds everyday, but our “living and lifestyles” can have both a positive and negative impact on their health, and our Watershed Checkup is designed to measure the impacts and make recommendations for improvements that we can all make.

Measuring Watershed Health 


The CLOCA jurisdiction is 638 square kilometres, stretching from the municipal boundaries of Ajax/Pickering to Clarington, from Lake Ontario to the height of the Oak Ridges Moraine.  This area includes portions of seven local municipalities, Ajax , Pickering, Uxbridge, Whitby , Oshawa , Clarington and Scugog. The entire jurisdiction or CLOCA’s watershed, is made up of 15 smaller sub-watersheds which drain to Lake Ontario . To keep things simple, watersheds are named after their primary creek, lake or river.  Some of the sub-watersheds you are probably familiar with, are Lynde Creek, Oshawa Creek, Black, Harmony and Farewell Creeks and the Bowmanville and Soper Creeks.

Looking after our watershed is a big job, and one we cannot do without your help and the support of our partners. The Watershed Checkup is a bench mark or a starting point to help us better understand and communicate how water and land resources are affected on a watershed scale, providing us all with a call to action plan that will help all levels of government, community leaders, residents and businesses be better stewards and help us reinvest, protect, restore and enhance our “natural” capital.  Our intent is not to point fingers and address blame, but to fairly identify the challenges of a growing community and provide solutions and new thinking along with the steps to improve the overall health of our watershed for the people and wildlife that live within it.

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Download ~ Watershed Checkup Report
(PDF ~ 5MB file size)
Download - Low Res. Watershed Checkup Report Checkup (PDF ~ 3mb file size)

Printed copies of the report are available at the Central Lake Ontario Conservation Office, 100 Whiting Avenue, Oshawa, ON
or
if you would like a copy of mailed to you please contact Patricia Lowe at
(905) 579-0411, ext. 126.

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"Everything is
connected to
everything else."
- Aldo Leopoid

Central Lake Ontario Conservation's Mission Statement
"To work towards the awareness, understanding, wise use and enhancement of our watershed resources for the benefit of the natural environment in partnership with our municipalities and our community."