|
Nature Needs More Good Friends
CANADA-ONTARIO AGREEMENT RESPECTING
THE GREAT LAKES BASIN ECOSYSTEM
The Don River runs through the heart of Toronto. Most of the river’s
watershed has been paved over by tract housing and malls, its feeder streams
lined with concrete, and its wetlands filled with rubble. For much of
the 20th century, the muddy Don River has been little more than an open
sewer cutting straight through the heart of Toronto.
The mills and factories that formerly crowded its banks are long gone.
But every time it rains, the Don fills again with untreated sewage from
overflowing sewers, urban runoff and the full range of modern industrial
pollutants.
Yet, after an absence of more than 100 years, fish are making their annual
run up the Don River. Deer, muskrat and even beaver can be found in its
reaches. Herons, ducks and geese are nesting in re-established marshlands
along its course. And families are picnicking by its banks. Although much
work still needs to be done, a coalition of government and community groups
are working together to ‘bring back the Don’.
The job is both complex and difficult. In many cases, this kind of work
has never been done before. The Don Watershed Regeneration Council is
credited for much of the success achieved so far.
Step by step, project by project the council is making steady progress.
The 27-member council is based on the twin principles of community input
and community ownership of the ecosystem regeneration process. Formed
back in 1995 as an advisory committee to the Toronto and Region Conservation
Authority (trca), it currently consists of residents, municipal councillors,
and representatives from various public interest groups.
Transcending arbitrary political boundaries, the council
is able to facilitate the transformation of local passion into action
across an entive watershed.
Forty steps to a new Don
The council developed a planning document to bring back the Don, involving
extensive research, mapping, consultation and community participation.
The council is committed to implementing the various stream rehabilitation
projects – replanting natural vegetation, recreating marshes and
wetlands, removing barriers to fish – outlined in the planning document
‘Forty Steps to a New Don’.
The council undertakes monitoring programs, assesses the progress made
in meeting target dates specified in the plan, facilitates information
exchanges, and contributes to regional planning processes. The council
also supports the efforts of those engaged in activities to regenerate
the Don, groups such as Toronto’s very active Task Force to Bring
Back the Don.
The council is not a formal regulatory body. As a result, it is completely
dependent on cooperative partnerships to get things accomplished. “The
council brings both local expertise and local sensitivities to the planning
table,” says council chair, Mark Wilson. “When it’s time
to get a project off the ground, they help raise funds and attract resources.
And when the dirty work finally starts, they mobilize hundreds of local
volunteers for clean-up parties, tree-planting days, whatever is needed.”
So far, restoring
habitat has been the first priority. From boy scouts to senior citizens,
volunteers have planted tens of thousands of trees and bushes, reseeded
meadows with native wildflowers, and rooted bulrushes and other aquatic
plants around restored ponds and shallow wetlands. Volunteers are also
removing invasive non-native plants, such as the purple loosestrife that
has been taking over Ontario’s wetlands, the garlic mustard which
can quickly carpet a forest floor, and the dog-strangling vine that is
choking meadow lands.
The impressive results of volunteers’ labours are scattered throughout
the 360 square kilometres of the Don River basin. There is the hugely
successful Harding Park regeneration project, and the restoration of the
concrete lined Terraview/Willowfield watercourse, and the transformation
of the industrial wasteland around the Don Valley Brick Works, and many
more. The Don Valley Brickworks project addresses the Lower Don River
from the Forks of the Don, where the East and West Don and Taylor Creek
meet, down to Lake Ontario. The Lower Don has held an important role in
the Region’s history as a place of settlement, agriculture and later,
industry. Here the river passes through some of Toronto’s most developed
and densely populated neighbourhoods.
Present day efforts to renaturalize the watershed and restore its health
are reviving the Lower Don’s role as a natural green-space and corridor
for wildlife. Groups such as the Evergreen Foundation and the Boy Scouts
of Canada work on landscape and wetland restoration. Many other groups
have planted wildflowers and shrubs.
Still much left to do
 Despite
the very significant gains already made, there is still much to do. Most
of the watershed’s former forest cover and valley wetlands have been
lost to development. What is left is being fragmented into smaller and
smaller chunks, and threatened by aggressive non-native plants and animals.
The water quality
through the watershed is still poor. Stormwater, which pours into the
river from more than a 1000 sewer outfalls and discharge pipes, accounts
for more than 70 percent of its total flow. It is also the primary source
of the high levels of phosphorous, fecal coliform, and heavy metals that
can be measured in the Don River. Instead of percolating slowly through
the soil to reach the river cool and clean, rain water gushes directly
from lawn and gutter, parking lot and roadway to the sewers and into the
Don.
Almost every time it rains, the combined storm and sanitary sewers
that serve many of the city’s older neighbourhoods overflow and dump
untreated sewage and contaminated wastewaters into the river. Polluted
runoff carries oil, gasoline and other pollutants directly into the Don
from the six-lane Don Valley Parkway that snakes through the valley.
Many of the habitat projects are helping to improve water quality. Natural
landscapes absorb, collect, filter and release stormwater gradually. Collection
ponds hold back runoff, reducing erosion and allowing solids to settle
out. Marshes and wetlands remove excess nutrients from the flow. But further
improvement is going to hinge on sewer upgrades, stormwater management
and runoff diversion projects.
A Wet Weather Flow Management Master Plan is being drafted by the City
of Toronto’s Works Department, a major player in the Toronto and
Region Area of Concern (aoc), in an attempt to control the runoff to drainage
and sewer systems during heavy rainfalls, spring thaws and other major
precipitation events. The municipality is taking a progressive approach
and consolidating all the various watershed and pollution control plans
developed in the past 15 years, with the final objective of reducing wet
weather-related water pollution.
Improving water quality is going to be a big job. The aquatic ecosystem
will not recover until we can stem the overflows from the old combined
sewers and find some way to divert the heavily polluted runoff. “No
single volunteer group, no matter how dedicated or how well organized,
could tackle this on its own,” says Wilson. “We have to have
all three levels of government – municipal, provincial and federal
– working together to bring the needed resources to bear on an environmental
problem of this magnitude and complexity.”
Some of that support has and will continue to come from the Great Lakes
Cleanup Fund and its successor, the Government of Canada’s Great
Lakes Sustainability Fund. Since 1990, the Great Lakes Cleanup Fund has
provided technical expertise and more than $8.5 million toward restoring
beneficial uses in the Toronto and Region AOC.
The Government of Ontario’s support to the TRCA in the 1990s and
establishment of funding for the Waterfront Regeneration Trust have contributed
to improvements being enjoyed in the area. Ontario is doing large volume
“Tributary Toxics” sampling in the Humber and Don Rivers as
part of its commitment to the Toronto and Region Remedial Action Plan.
Under the new Canada-Ontario Agreement Respecting the Great Lakes Basin
Ecosystem, the governments of Canada and Ontario will continue to work
together to help local municipalities.
Turning passion into action
The greatest strength of the Don Watershed Regeneration Council will
continue to be its unique ability to unite and coordinate local and regional
interests. The Council views the watershed as a collection of communities,
each one fired by an emotional attachment to its own stretch of river
and inspired by the possibility for environmental renewal.
Transcending arbitrary political boundaries, the Council is able to facilitate
the transformation of local passion into action across an entire watershed.
The Council has also opened the channels of communication. Local groups
are providing input on basin-wide problems, while decision makers are
getting community feedback about the impact of regional, provincial and
federal action plans.
The Council is an excellent example of the kind of place-based, shared
environmental responsibility that the governments of Canada and Ontario
will be working to foster in AOCs around the Great Lakes, under the new
COA. The Council has really shown the exceptional value of forging the
strongest kinds of partnerships at the local level. “The Council
doesn’t have any regulatory clout, and it doesn’t have vast
financial resources,” says Wilson. “All the things we’ve
accomplished are due to the insight, the sweat and the stamina of our
many dedicated and committed partners.”
Under the new COA, it is anticipated that a number of AOCs will be fully
restored and that significant progress will be made in meeting the objectives
of the other RAPs in the remaining AOCs. The remediation of Collingwood
Harbour was completed in 1994.
Looking at the bigger picture
The rehabilitation of the Don River watershed is just one component
of the Toronto and Region Remedial Action Plan (rap), and the Don
Watershed Regeneration Council is just one of more than 20 watershed
groups involved in RAP-related activities in the Toronto and Region
Area of Concern (aoc). A four party agreement for RAP coordination
has been signed by the Waterfront Regeneration Trust, the Toronto
and Region Conservation Authority, Environment Canada, and Ontario
Ministry of the Environment.
The agreement enables the support of the Don Watershed Regeneration
Council and many other watershed groups.
|
To learn more about COA and the RAPs, contact:
|
|
|
|
|
Environment Canada
www.on.ec.gc.ca
(416) 739-4809 |
Ontario Ministry of the Environment
www.ene.gov.on.ca
(416) 325-4000
or 1-800-565-4923 |
|
