Item List

Whitchurch–Stouffville is divided between large areas of protected forest in the north and growing development pressures within its four main settlement areas: Ballantrae, Musselman’s Lake, Gormley, and Stouffville proper. Since 2018, the Town has advocated for Minister’s Zoning Orders (MZOs) and settlement-area expansions on the Oak Ridges Moraine at both the regional and provincial levels. To date, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing has denied these requests and directed future development to Whitchurch–Stouffville’s remaining “Whitebelt.” The area has also experienced failures in private water servicing in rural settlement areas, following a rash of contaminated wells in the late 1980s.

Whitby includes southern/eastern Moraine edge areas where downstream water quality and headwater-connected systems depend on strong stormwater and watershed-sensitive planning. Key threats include growth-related infrastructure expansion and cumulative imperviousness from development patterns at the Moraine boundary.

Vaughan is a major urban-edge municipality on the Moraine, where high growth pressure makes conformity with Moraine protections especially consequential at the interface. Risks often include servicing and transportation corridors, large-scale land use changes, and cumulative impacts that reduce natural linkage effectiveness and increase runoff.

In the early 2000s, the proposed Gan Eden subdivision galvanized Uxbridge residents and local governments to defend the Oak Ridges Moraine, helping build momentum for the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan. Now marketed as the “Trail Capital of Canada,” Moraine protection supports a growing recreation economy, even as pressures continue from aggregate extraction, fill disposal, and estate residential development. With limited “white lands” and major investments in municipal services and wastewater capacity, concerns are rising about future settlement boundary expansion at the Moraine’s edge.

Trent Hills is near the eastern extent of the Moraine (toward the Castleton end), where protecting headwater landscapes and rural natural heritage remains a core function. Threats tend to be cumulative: smaller development files, roads/culverts, drainage works, and site alteration that gradually alter hydrology and fragment habitat.

In Scugog, the Oak Ridges Moraine is a primary water source feeding the Nonquon River and other headwaters that drain into Lake Scugog. Stewarded by the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation and the Scugog Lake Stewards, the ongoing decline in Lake Scugog’s health, including the collapse of the pickerel fishery, highlights a direct link between land-use decisions and downstream lake conditions. Key concerns include protecting headwaters and reducing agricultural runoff, as well as contaminants common in urban stormwater.

Richmond Hill contains one of the Moraine’s most sensitive connectivity pinch points at the Yonge Street corridor area, where remaining linkage width is limited. Threats are primarily urban-edge pressures: redevelopment/intensification, transportation works, and cumulative impacts that further squeeze linkage and stress water-related features.

Port Hope sits toward the eastern Moraine, where rural headwaters and connected natural cover support downstream aquatic systems. Common threats include dispersed rural development, site alteration/fill, and road/drainage changes that can degrade headwater function if not managed conservatively.

Pickering includes Moraine-edge landscapes where water balance, stormwater controls, and protection of linked natural areas are central to preventing incremental decline. Risks include large growth-related infrastructure, servicing, and the steady accumulation of smaller approvals that increase imperviousness and fragment corridors.

The Moraine is notably narrow in the Oshawa area (a known connectivity pinch point), which means maintaining linkage and hydrologic function requires extra care. Pressures typically include corridor infrastructure, growth spillover, and cumulative effects from development-interface grading and drainage changes.

Newmarket’s Oak Ridges Moraine Area is small but highly regulated, limited to Natural Core and Settlement Area designations, with the Town treating the ORM boundary and Natural Core mapping as effectively. Because this edge area sits within the East Holland headwaters zone on the ORM’s sandy, high-infiltration landscape, even minor changes in stormwater, grading, or servicing can translate into cumulative impacts on flow and water quality downstream.

New Tecumseth’s Oak Ridges Moraine area is interwoven with the history of Tottenham, which grew around what is now the protected Tottenham Conservation Area. Anchored by the town’s central mill pond and surrounding countryside, this protected space has long been part of local identity. As New Tecumseth, alongside other parts of Simcoe County, is targeted for unprecedented levels of growth, ongoing official plan reviews and growth management plans will increase tensions at the ORM’s edge in the years ahead.

Sitting at the transition between the Oak Ridges Moraine and the Niagara Escarpment, the Town of Mono is a steward of wetlands and headwaters that support the Credit, Humber, and Nottawasaga river systems. In Mono, the ORM’s recharge areas work together with the Escarpment’s steep valleys, as infiltrated water resurfaces as springs that feed fast-moving streams and sustain cold, stable headwaters and wetland pockets. In recent years, the Town of Mono has seen very few major or minor development applications on the ORM.

Markham’s Oak Ridges Moraine lands cross the municipality’s northern urban edge and are connected to Lake Ontario through the headwaters of the Rouge watershed and its associated protected areas. Protecting groundwater recharge, headwater flow stability, and the forests that wildlife use for movement and migration depends on safeguarding this junction from encroaching development and infrastructure pressures. In the recent past, major concerns have surrounded the use of Minister’s Zoning Orders (MZOs) and other exclusionary or carve-out policy tools that can bypass normal planning scrutiny and weaken the effectiveness of ORM protections.

As the birthplace of one of the two original STORM groups that later merged to form the STORM Coalition, King residents have long been among the Oak Ridges Moraine’s most vocal and ardent defenders. At the same time, branding King as one of the “greenest” municipalities on the Moraine has helped sustain high land values and attract large estate-residential projects. Growth and intensification pressures in King’s settlement areas, combined with recurring proposals for major institutional development and supporting infrastructure on or near the Moraine, continue to test the strength of ORM protections and the municipality’s ability to maintain headwater function and natural heritage connectivity.

Kawartha Lakes contains northeastern Moraine lands where the Moraine’s headwater role is especially visible in the number of streams and tributaries originating or being sustained by recharge. Threats often include rural development patterns, shoreline/watershed pressures, and cumulative land disturbance that can affect water quality and baseflows.

Hamilton occupies a small share of the Moraine, holding a little over 5% of the total ORM area, largely split between Countryside and Natural Linkage designations (about 38% and 40%, respectively). To date, Hamilton has seen few applications for major development. Most recorded activity is minor and rural in nature, with the majority involving surplus farm dwelling severances.

East Gwillimbury’s Oak Ridges Moraine area contains the headwaters of the East Holland River, where springs along the ORM’s northern flank feed tributaries that drain north into Cook’s Bay, Lake Simcoe. Following provincial decisions that redesignated the “Whitebelt” lands around the community of Mount Albert for future development, there is growing community concern surrounding the pace of growth and the capacity and impacts of expanded municipal water, wastewater, and stormwater servicing in these sensitive headwaters.

Cramahe includes the Moraine’s eastern terminus near Castleton. The Oak Ridges Moraine in this area is a rural mosaic of Countryside lands alongside Natural Core and Natural Linkage designations, and it includes locally significant natural systems such as the Salt Creek valley, where candidate Areas of Natural and Scientific Interest (Oak Heights–Salt Creek and Salt Creek) have been identified

Not only is Clarington one of the fastest-growing municipalities in Durham Region, it has also become a major transportation corridor and an increasingly important energy corridor. While much of the municipality’s growth and infrastructure is concentrated in the Lake Ontario corridor, rising electricity demand in the north-east is now driving new and expanded transmission projects linking Clarington to Peterborough, with proposed routes on and through the Oak Ridges Moraine (ORM). These include the planned expansion of Hydro One’s Clarington Transformer Station and the proposed Durham–Kawartha Power Line.

Cavan-Monaghan is a gateway to the Ganaraska watershed, where Oak Ridges Moraine headwaters, wetlands, and forests shape downstream water quality and flow. Once nearly desertified into shifting sand dunes by early deforestation and settlement pressures, major restoration projects rebuilt one of the ORM’s most ecologically rich landscapes. It has also been a front line for debates over large wind-generation projects on the ORM, and now faces rising pressure from estate-style rural development as wealthy Torontonians look further east for lower property values.

While the Town of Caledon has been embroiled in repeated encroachments into the Greenbelt Plan area, including the Highway 413 corridor and the recent Swan Lake controversy, the Oak Ridges Moraine has not been a direct target yet. The more persistent threat facing the Moraine in Caledon is the ongoing development of “green sprawl.” Exemplified by the areas in and around the Palgrave Estate Residential Community, estate-lot creation and low-density growth continue to raise issues around fragmentation, servicing, and the gradual erosion of Caledon’s rural cultural heritage

Adjala-Tosorontio’s Oak Ridges Moraine landscape is defined by rolling uplands, woodlots, wetlands, and small headwater tributaries that support groundwater recharge and downstream water quality. In recent years, an influx of new residents has accelerated demand for an estate-residential model, often testing long-standing rural community character and planning capacity and echoing the servicing, fragmentation, and cumulative-impact lessons of places like Palgrave. The main pressures show up through lot creation and severances, dispersed estate development, and incremental site alteration that, taken together, can erode natural heritage connectivity and subtly alter drainage and recharge

Alnwick/Haldimand sits at the eastern end of the Oak Ridges Moraine near the Rice Lake Plains and is shaped by places such as Alderville First Nation and Peter’s Woods Provincial Park, where efforts are underway to restore tallgrass prairie and the globally rare black oak savannah habitats native to the area. Planning pressures here are typically cumulative and rural in scale, showing up through incremental changes that can reduce wetland function and habitat connectivity over time.

With over 60% of its Oak Ridges Moraine lands designated as Settlement Area, Aurora’s planning decisions are where the rules governing growth at the ORM's edge are most frequently tested. In the East Holland River subwatershed, stormwater, grading, and servicing choices affect ORM headwaters and recharge features that feed local tributaries, including the Aurora Branch, before flowing north toward Lake Simcoe. The main risks are boundary and interface pressures, redevelopment and intensification spillover, and piecemeal approvals that can incrementally narrow Natural Linkage function and shift drainage patterns over time.