Urban Runoff

Toronto’s stormwater is polluted and urban runoff is the main source. In an urban environment, runoff flows across impermeable surfaces and through stormsewers into our rivers without the natural filtration of soil and vegetation that occurs in undeveloped watersheds. Urban runoff has three key characteristics. It is fast, hot and dirty.

Understanding how runoff carries pollution from your yard to the river is another key step to solving the problem of river pollution. The next step is finding out what these pollutants are and pinpointing their origins. Surprisingly a large portion of these pollutants come from activities we do everyday. Check out What's in Runoff to find out some of the most common sources and how we can change simple habits to work towards cleaning Toronto’s watersheds!

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