Town of Milton Ten-Year Holistic Environmental Monitoring Program

The Town of Milton is located 50 km (30 miles) southwest of Toronto, Ontario. It has a current population of 95,000 residents, and is proposed to have a population of 160,000 within the next 10 years. Milton has the distinction of being the Province’s fastest growing Municipality from 2001 to 2011. The Town has been monitoring the environmental effects of each phase of development as it progresses, to regularly update and establish new guidelines for future development.The Environmental Monitoring Program (EMP) was established to enable the Town of Milton to evaluate the performance of the stormwater and environmental designs and mitigation measures advanced by the developments on the Secondary Plan Area, and to provide the necessary information to adjust and or optimize the plan recommendations through a process of adaptive management. The EMP is comprised of two parts: an over-arching holistic monitoring program and a number of local monitoring programs for individual developments It is not the purpose of the holistic program to monitor an isolated stormwater management facility or isolated creek realignment (this would be covered by local monitoring), rather the intent is to identify the overall impacts associated with converting the specified lands from rural to urban uses.