By Beatrice Toplitsky [1]
BELLEVILLE – Officials say the crystal clear waters of the Bay of Quinte took decades to clean up, and now it’s time to hear from the public.
The Bay of Quinte Remedial Action Plan has worked to get rid of the pollution in the Bay of Quinte since it was initially identified as a Great Lakes area of concern in 1985 and continues to do so to this day.
Since then, 11 environmental challenges have been identified in the Bay, and today seven of those are fully restored.
Next, there is the challenge of aesthetics or how the Bay of Quinte’s appearance. It means dealing with leftover environmental concerns from Quinte’s industrial past.
Finally, officials are saying the water quality is doing better than ever.
Water from the bay has already scored excellent in terms of its colour, clarity, odour, and debris.
But this is only the scientific criteria. Now the public gets a chance to say whether the water looks clear or that it is the right colour or there is no debris.
“Now is the time for people to have their say because there’s no going back. Once these environmental challenges are restored, that’s it,” said spokesperson Sarah Midlane-Jones in an interview with QNet News. She represents the remedial action plan.
Public input is critical because once an environmental status is designated “restored” it cannot be changed back. No further work will be done, she said.
Midlane-Jones says that the clean up isn’t concerned with litter that might be found along the shore.
“Those sort of things aren’t something that’s there constantly,” she explained, “These would have been something that’s sort of more persistent than that.”
The Bay is in much better shape after tighter regulations and compliance levels for how industries deal with their waste, she said.
If the aesthetics are reclassified as restored, that leaves three environmental challenges, all of which are nearing restoration, says Midlane-Jones.
“There’s a lot of moving parts to this,” she said. “We’re getting very close.”
She encourages everyone to read the full report [2] on aesthetics from the remedial action plan. Feedback on the Bay can be sent to smidlanejones@bqrap.ca [3].