BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a story titled 'Barrie council firing off letters addressing Lake Simcoe's health,' published Dec. 15.
One can sense the recent frustration of Barrie council regarding the health of Lake Simcoe.
Dispatching upwards of 17 letters to various provincial and federal ministries, with only two replies, regarding phosphorous pollution in Lake Simcoe, is a matter of concern.
Yet even if the Holland Marsh is singled out, deservedly so, as the major polluter, perhaps council should be looking at its own shortcomings in this regard.
Historically, Barrie was blessed with 10 pristine watercourses, each of them a trout-filled creek that poured into Kempenfelt Bay.
More recently, rampant development has destroyed the integrity of these streams, aided and abetted by the failure of the city to adequately deal with stormwater.
I can think of only a handful of proper stormwater retention ponds, such as three adjacent to Lovers Creek, several near the Barrie South GO station and the large facility just east of Bayfield Street on Hanmer Street.
Elsewhere, the polluted stormwater continues to flow down Hotchkiss, Dyment’s, Bunkers and Kidd’s Creek unrestrained. Prettifying the mouths of these watercourses as they enter the bay won’t do it, nor will the millions spent on massive culverts and widening on the lower part of Kidd’s Creek.
The same brown tide of polluted, phosphorous laden water will continue to roll into Lake Simcoe until proper stormwater retention ponds are constructed at source.
Recently, there seemed to be cause for hope with the reconstruction of the “dry” pond behind the cemetery on Sunnidale Road, but it only slows the flow at best that appears in the badly eroded ravine below Cundles Road.
Only a large retention pond at the corner of Livingstone Street and Ford Street could mitigate this situation. Otherwise, Kidd’s Creek will remain what it is – little more than a gutted sewer.
Along with the other Barrie streams, it will freely contribute to the ongoing degradation of Kempenfelt Bay and Lake Simcoe.
Mark Fisher
Barrie
