For a couple of months last spring, Hamilton’s Cootes Paradise Marsh offered a glimpse of what’s possible.
The typically murky water was clear.
“It’s a bizarre thought — you could see the bottom, enjoy the bottom, which was a first in [most] people’s lifetime,” said Tys Theysmeyer, a senior director with the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG), a charitable organization that manages the marsh.
“You would’ve been confused as to where you were because it was so nice.”
But after heavy rain in July, the westernmost tip of Lake Ontario reverted to its usual murky state that is not exactly good, but better than the decades before, Theysmeyer told CBC Hamilton in an interview this month.
The rain caused Chedoke Creek’s sewage tanks to overflow into Cootes Paradise, while sediment and rubble poured in from eroding and flooding escarpment creeks.
The extreme weather event demonstrated how, despite the RBG’s decades-long attempts to clean up Cootes Paradise, it is still hampered by outside factors — namely climate change and city stormwater infrastructure, said Theysmeyer.
Watch | How Cootes Paradise has changed for the better since the 1970s:
The city’s plan to clean up watersheds will focus on reducing the amount of pollution collected in stormwater that runs off from parking lots, roads and driveways into sewers, creeks and rivers, and then into Cootes Paradise and Hamilton Harbour.
That’s why the RBG is paying particular attention to a new plan from the city to clean up its watersheds, Theysmeyer said, and by extension Cootes Paradise and Hamilton Harbour, as well as Grindstone Marsh in Burlington, Ont.
City staff presented a plan to councillors earlier this month that includes 10 actions to prioritize in the next three years. It’ll cost $7.5 million, which will be requested this coming budget cycle, says a staff report.
Goal is to no longer be ‘area of concern’
The plan will focus on reducing the amount of pollution collected in water that runs off parking lots, roads and driveways into sewers, creeks and rivers, and then into Cootes Paradise and Hamilton Harbour, said senior project manager Tim Crowley at the general issues committee meeting Nov. 6.
Some strategies will protect natural resources and add gardens and green space, all of which absorb stormwater, as well as reduce the amount of harmful nutrients used in fertilizers — like phosphorous and nitrogen — from entering waterways, and identify and reduce erosion in creeks, the staff report says.
The city will also improve snow removal and street sweeping.
The goal is to get Hamilton Harbour and Cootes Paradise healthy enough to no longer be considered an “area of concern” by the federal government, and among about 40 Great Lake regions that have experienced high levels of environmental harm in Canada and the U.S., says the report.
Conditions would need to be so good that beaches stay open all summer, fish caught in the harbour can be eaten, wildlife habitat and diversity grows, and algae is no longer an issue, the report says.
David Galbraith, head of science for the RBG, said the city’s plan is “admirable” and he hopes it gets properly funded so Cootes Paradise continue to improve.
The nature sanctuary’s marsh has been plagued by pollution for decades, with it being the worst in the 1970s and gradually becoming healthier through concerted clean up efforts, he said.
He and Theysmeyer have watched native wildlife return and fish and bird and plant populations grow, even in the face of climate change.
“Cootes Paradise sits in a place with a sordid history in an industrial world,” Theysmeyer said. “It’s going to be one of the first places to turn around and be lovely. People are going to go, ‘Wow, it happened here in Hamilton? There is hope for the future.'”