St. Thomas’s flood watches, shoreline permits and two of its favourite conservation areas are run by the Kettle Creek Conservation Authority. Starting February 1, 2027, that authority will not exist on its own anymore.
Under recent changes to Ontario’s Conservation Authorities Act, the province is merging its 36 conservation authorities down to nine regional ones. Locally, Kettle Creek will combine with the Catfish Creek, Long Point Region and Grand River conservation authorities into a new organization called the Eastern Lake Erie Regional Conservation Authority, or ELERCA.
St. Thomas council got two updates on the merger at its August 10 meeting, both received as information items with no vote needed. The first was a letter announcing who will lead the transition. The second named the local people doing the work.
The letter, from the four authorities’ chairs, said the Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency, the new provincial body set up to oversee the whole process, had announced on July 15 that it appointed Samantha Lawson as ELERCA’s project executive. Lawson is the current CAO of the Grand River Conservation Authority, where she has worked for 21 years, the last seven as CAO. She will chair a transition committee and serve as ELERCA’s first CAO, for up to two years, once the new organization launches.
The second letter, from the provincial agency’s CEO, Hassaan Basit, named that transition committee’s members. Each of the four authorities sends its general manager or CAO plus one elected board member. Kettle Creek’s two seats go to general manager Elizabeth VanHooren and board member Sharron McMillan. The committee is expected to hold its first meeting later this summer.
The four authorities’ chairs, Morgaine Griffin of Catfish Creek, John Challinor II of Grand River, Todd Noble of Kettle Creek and Doug Brunton of Long Point Region, issued a joint statement in June promising to handle the merger openly. They also adopted seven guiding principles, among them keeping current staff on and treating them fairly, making sure services stay locally responsive, and not losing the watershed-by-watershed approach conservation authorities are built around.
Grand River’s own transition page says that, for Grand River specifically, “there are no immediate changes to governance structure, programs, services, or day-to-day operations” while the merger is worked out. Kettle Creek has not posted a similar line of its own, though the chairs’ July letter says the priority is “a seamless transition while continuing to deliver the programs and services that municipalities, residents, and watershed communities rely on.”
The same August 10 meeting also received a separate letter, from Catfish Creek Conservation Authority’s general manager, Dusty Underhill, about that authority’s own 2027 draft budget and levy. It is a reminder that each of the four authorities is still setting its own budget and billing its own member municipalities for now, even as the bigger merger moves ahead in the background.
None of the documents released so far, the June joint statement, the July letters or the authorities’ own transition pages, says what happens to Kettle Creek’s Ferguson Line office or its staff once ELERCA takes over, or whether the levy St. Thomas pays will change. Nothing has been said yet, either, about what a board covering four watersheds, stretching all the way to the Grand River system around Kitchener and Waterloo, will mean for how much say St. Thomas gets over decisions that affect Kettle Creek specifically.
Kettle Creek Conservation Authority, founded in 1965, has run flood forecasting and development and shoreline permits for St. Thomas and Port Stanley for decades, along with popular spots like Dalewood and Lake Whittaker Conservation Areas. For now, none of that is changing. The office, the staff and the bill the city pays are the real open questions, and LocVox will keep watching for answers as the transition committee gets to work this summer.
Sources: St. Thomas council agenda, August 10, 2026 (items 25.h and 25.i), ELERCA Transition – Project Executive Appointed, Grand River Conservation Authority’s ELERCA transition page
By Anthony Zruna · About the LocVox Newsroom
