Lake Banook is one of Dartmouth’s most popular swimming destinations but this summer the beach was closed for nearly half of the supervised swimming season.
“We need to get to the, ‘what is happening and why?’ because if the lake is sending us a signal that something’s not quite right, then we really need to be proactive about that because can you imagine Dartmouth without Lake Banook as part of summer?” Sam Austin said, the area councillor for Dartmouth Centre.
The municipality monitors water levels at Birch Cove Beach and unusually high levels of bacteria led to multiple closures this summer.
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The tests came back positive for high levels of e-Coli, according to Deacoff.
“You can certainly get quite sick and have diarrhea and depending on what’s at play, it could get a lot worse,” Deacoff said.
The reason behind the high level of bacteria remains to be known, which is why Councillor Austin is bringing forward a motion to regional council to try to get to the bottom of it.
“It could be coming from dogs, it could be coming from ducks, it could be human contamination, could be a disturbance in the soil, we just don’t know at this point,” Austin said.
Austin is presenting a motion at the next regional council meeting to have a ‘pollution control study’ completed.