The yearly number of days Halifax beaches have been closed increased 301.78 per cent since 2012, and the reason for the increase hasn’t been determined.
The data was provided by the municipality at a Regional Watersheds Advisory Board meeting on Wednesday night.
“Not a significant — a major increase in the number of beach closures,” board chair Walter Regan said.
Cameron Deacoff, an environment performance officer for the municipality, said so far, the government’s role has been to determine if beaches are safe to swim in, not what’s causing the public beaches to close due to high levels of bacteria.
He also said that there isn’t data available to determine what’s contributed to the uptick.
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“By and large, beaches are located in areas that are close to urban settlements. We know that there are point sources of contaminants to lakes and beaches,” Deacoff said.
“Most of the point sources that could contribute to lakes are regulated and controlled and held in check, but so that typically leaves non-point sources, which are often driven through stormwater runoff into lakes, as the general cause or source vector for contaminants and bacteria that leads to beach closures.”
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Staff are working on a report looking at pollution source control for Lake Banook, Deacoff added.
The last federal guidelines update regarding beach bacterial level safety came out in 2012.
The number of beach closures in the municipality:
- 2010: 78
- 2011: 101
- 2012: 56
- 2013: 110
- 2014: 40
- 2015: 157
- 2016: 160
- 2017: 225
The document states that 2010’s numbers are “uncertain results.”
This year, Kinsmen, Kinap, and Birch Cove beaches have been closed for 62, 44, and 33 days, respectively.
The government posed three questions (PDF) to members of the board during the meeting:
- Is [the municipality]’s current beach monitoring program adequate?
- What changes would you make to improve the current beach monitoring program?
- Should [the municipality] link the beaches monitoring program with a larger corporate monitoring program, and if so, for what purposes and how?
Board members said, among other things, that they were concerned that beaches aren’t tested in most of September and other months when people swim in the beaches, so they have to swim at their own risk, “which I think is ridiculous,” Regan said.
Regan said he wants to see other lakes get tested regularly to help protect wildlife.
“What upset me was the lack of funding, lack of budget and lack of staff,” he said.
Their responses will be conveyed to management to be considered, according to Deacoff.
In 2006, municipal staff began collecting water quality data from lakes and rivers three times a year.
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“Data collected was used to support a number of decisions for land-use planning, and to determine if there were any changes in water quality over time, and to assess if there were any associations with wastewater infrastructure,” Deacoff said.
The program ended in 2011.
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