2017 Harbour Report Card

Fifty percent of all inputs received into Hamilton Harbour go through one of three wastewater treatment plants: Hamilton’s Woodward and Dundas plants, and Halton’s Skyway plant. The Skyway plant was upgraded to tertiary treatment in 2016 at a cost of $158.8 million, and the Woodward plant is undergoing a similar $330 million upgrade that will be completed by 2022. At that point, most treated wastewater being released into Hamilton Harbour will be helping to improve water quality in the bay because the amounts of nutrients such as phosphorus will actually be lower than the RAP target.

The parts of the City of Hamilton developed prior to approximately 1970 have combined sewers where only one pipe carries both sewage and stormwater. Most of the time, combined sewers carry all contents (rain, melted snow and sewage) to wastewater treatment plants for full treatment.

During periods of intense rainfall or heavy snowmelt, the volume of stormwater that enters these combined sewers may exceed the system’s capacity and some of the combined sewer flow (a mix of stormwater and sewage) must be diverted (or overflow) untreated, directly into creeks, rivers and the Lake. Combined sewer discharges contain harmful bacteria, pathogens, heavy metals, oils, and pesticides, as well as nutrients that can increase algae growth and degrade surface water. Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) were designed to act as a relief valve to prevent sewer overloads, which could lead to backups that flood basements, public spaces and even sewage treatment plants.

The City of Hamilton has developed an overview of the combined sewer issue and has a combined sewer overflow strategy.

The Province of Ontario also publishes design guidelines for sewage systems that include operational measures which may help to mitigate the impacts of combined sewer systems.

The problem of legacy contaminated sediment at Randle Reef was first discovered in 1988. At the time, the problem was believed to be limited in extent, but as technology and field methods improved it was realized that the problem was orders of magnitude larger than first thought.

Other examples of science continuing to improve our understanding of the Harbour’s properties and processes include ongoing studies into the lack of dissolved oxygen in the ecosystem, the recent declines in native fish populations, DNA fingerprinting of E. coli bacteria at the Harbour’s beaches, the impact of internal loading of phosphorus stored away in sediment, and the extent and difficulty posed by watershed sources of phosphorus.

Nutrients such as phosphorus play a crucial role in the normal function of aquatic ecosystems, but too many nutrients can have negative impacts. Learn more about nutrient pollution in general, and phosphorus in aquatic ecosystems, in particular.

• The steady increase in land use change and development across the Hamilton Harbour Watershed increasingly impacts surface water quality. Construction sites and agriculture, for example, create large amounts of sediment which clogs up waterways and helps to transport phosphorus downstream. And roads, parking lots and other hard surfaces change the way that water travels across the watershed, increasing its speed and causing erosion and contamination of waterways.

• 2009 Report to Hamilton City Council the first time the stormwater rate was proposed: http://www2.hamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/D52CC066-2B81-47F0-B095-9645178A0211/0/Dec04PW09099.pdf

• Alectra Utilities (formerly Horizon Utilities) bills water and wastewater/stormwater usage charges on behalf of the City of Hamilton: https://www.horizonutilities.com/myBusiness/waterSewerBilling/Pages/default.aspx

Water is H2O – a molecule of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. But this single oxygen atom in every water molecules is not what is needed by organisms living in aquatic ecosystems. A small amount of oxygen – up to about ten molecules of oxygen per million of water molecules – is actually dissolved in water. This dissolved oxygen is what is breathed by fish and other critters in the water for their survival.

Eutrophication is a process caused when surface water receives an excessive nutrient load, particularly phosphorus and nitrogen. This often results in an overgrowth of algae. As the algae die and decompose, oxygen dissolved in the water is depleted. The lack of oxygen in the water can cause aquatic animals such as fish to die.

This chart illustrates a dramatic improvement in water quality over time (through the reduction of phosphorus in the Harbour).

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Water quality drives so many other elements of the ecosystem, some of our goals lag waiting for further water quality improvements overall.

Climate change is, of course, the greatest uncertainty in our community’s efforts to restore Hamilton Harbour. The Prairie Climate Centre has produced a very good overview with resources, and the federal government’s site also provides a lot of information. There are also other sites with local connections to climate change, including Climate Change Hamilton, the Hamilton Conservation Authority and the City of Burlington. It has been reported that climate change will impact local weather patterns and that summers will be increasingly hot.

The City of Hamilton reports on beach water quality, and this webpage also has updates on the presence of toxin-producing blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) in Hamilton Harbour in the summer of 2018, as well as documents related to the 2016 closure of Bayfront Park Beach. You can also read BARC’s op-ed in The Hamilton Spectator in

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BARC has produced our own Randle Reef project website (with assistance from Environment Canada) in order to explain and keep current as constuction proceeds.

ArcelorMittal Dofasco is proposing to contain contaminated sediment within the Kenilworth Avenue Boat Slip by constructing and monitoring new facilities, used for the disposal of hazardous waste, including an engineered in-situ cap and a separate engineered containment area.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305431259_Trends_in_Hamilton_Harbour_suspended_sediment_quality

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/headlines/toxic-banned-pcbs-are-leaking-into-hamilton-harbour-1.3304688

One principal difference between the Harbour we are restoring today and the one that made Hamilton synonomous with pollution is the difference between active and legacy sources of that pollution.

From the article: “complex mixtures of legacy contaminants, emerging chemicals and natural biotoxins in marine ecosystems represent important scientific, economic and health challenges.” All three of these contaminant problems impact Hamilton Harbour.

As Dana Sackett reports: “Legacy is defined as something that is inherited by one generation from the previous.While some legacies are better than others, not all are good. Legacy pollutants are one of the bad ones.These pollutants stick around to cause problems well after they are released into the environment. Indeed, they often continue to cause harm even after they are banned by regulation.”

Scientific American reports that in all of the Great Lakes, old contaminants like DDT are declining but are being replaced by new ones, such as flame retardants.

• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228947477_Contaminated_Sediment_Remediation_in_the_Laurentian_Great_Lakes_an_Overview

• https://www.epa.gov/greatlakes/contaminated-sediment-great-lakes

The vast majority of toxic contaminants in Hamilton Harbour are legacy pollution that remain in mostly in the sediment long after their source has been removed. Much of this has been mapped out and even remediated – as is the case with Randle Reef, the largest and most renowned source of legacy pollution in Hamilton Harbour – but not enough is known about some others but progress is slowly being made. For example, there has been a selection of management options and environmental assessment process for the Dofasco boat slip, and at the Strathearne Slip there has been a characterization of sources of contaminated sediment – the last known active source of PCBs in Hamilton Harbour – enabling a long legal battle over responsibility to play out.

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In 2013, the RAP Office organized a workshop with scientists, planners and other professional at all RAP agencies to examine watershed sources of phosphorus and sediment. A significant outcome of that workshop was the formation of four new RAP committees to specifically examine urban sources in Hamilton, urban sources in Burlington, active construction sites as significant point sources, and rural lands as significant non-point sources.

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• Ontario’s 2003 Stormwater Management Planning and Design Manual

• Ontario’s current Draft Low Impact Development (LID) Stormwater Management Guidance Manual

Agriculture both relies on and impacts surface water quality. It’s therefore important to understand the connection between farming practices and water.

In addition, here’s an interesting paper by the OECD on agriculture and sustainability, and although global in nature, the lessons it draws have relevance in the Hamilton Harbour watershed.

It’s been suggested that improvements in water quality in Hamilton Harbour have levelled off in recent years.

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• Hamilton’s water and wastewater master plan is a servicing strategy designed to provide for treatment needs into the future.

• http://www2.hamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/BC9F9088-953C-4825-9741-EA17A620D7FB/0/StormwaterPresentation_Part_A_3700852.pdf

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• Overview of Combined Sewer Overflows

• City of Hamilton Combined Sewer Overflow Strategy

• Mitigating Risk of Combined Sewer Overflow

• Design Guidelines for sewage works

The conservation authorities in particular have long-standing outreach programs with rural and other land owners to share and learn about best practices in farming and other human activities that impact water quality.

Low Impact Development (LID) is the name for several green infrastructure approaches and techniques to better manage water on the landscape, especially in how development and land use changes can more effective mimic the water cycles of natural landscapes. The Green Infrastructure Ontario Coalition has a wealth of information about the science and policy behind making green infrastructure the “new normal”, and the Low Impact Development Center in Maryland also has links to many interesting projects and resources.

The Hamilton Harbour watershed is entirely within the landscapes covered by the Hamilton Conservation Authority and Conservation Halton, and includes the watersheds of the main tributary rivers that flow into the Harbour: Red Hill Creek, Spencer Creek, and Grindstone Creek.

The subwatershed report cards – Hamilton Conservation Authority’s 2018 Watershed Report Card and Conservation Halton’s 2018 Watershed Report Card – provide scientific data and analyses on local environmental conditions to provide awareness for citizens and get this information to local decision-makers

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Measuring the impact of community and educational programming and events is very difficult. What we know for is the content of the messages and materials, and the number of people participating. BARC’s educational programming and community events engage more than 15,000 participants each year, and while that’s a great number, we can’t know the impression that these new messages and experiences have on our participants. And we also can’t know the number of additional people that we influence through communication with participants after we’ve engaged with them.

To BARC’s end, we have worked with experts from McMaster University for many years to learn from feedback we receive from teachers and other program participants, and to survey public opinion on the issues related to water and our mandate.

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In 2013, BARC began to build an web-based interactive map to assist citizens to locate place-based information about the Harbour’s history and ecology that we called our Interactive Harbour Explorer.

• The West Harbour is the principal shoreline recreational area in the Harbour. Historically neglected and entirely lacking in public access, the West Harbour has been re-imagined in a formal redevelopment plan known as Setting Sail.

• In 2016, BARC released a position statement to formalize our view and aspirations for the continued redevelopment of the West Harbour.

• West Harbour Waterfront Recreation Master Plan

• Find out more about the plans for residential development at Pier 8, including the winning bid by Waterfront Shores.

The RAP goals for aquatic habitat and public access to the waterfront depend on having accurate measurements of the shoreline. Attempts to quantify the shoreline and its land use and habitat types have been improving over time, and there are currently processes in place to support making these better and more accurate.

BARC was formed in 1991 principally to monitor the progress of the Hamilton Harbour Remedial Action Plan. Our 2017 Report Card is one of the most recent examples of how we continue to serve the public interest in that way. But have always played a more expansive role than that.

In 2017, BARC’s educational and outreach programming in schools and across the watershed engaged more than 15,000 students and citizens in community events and volunteer activities. We’re doing as much as we can to help our fellow citizens young and old to better appreciate our collective relationship with water. For example, our programming links water with art (e.g., Stream of Dreams), stormwater with land use and water quality (e.g., Raingers), and links human activities with the health of water (e.g., Yellow Fish Road) and critters (e.g., Creeks and Creepy Crawlies).

We are joined in these efforts by an increasing number of people and programs. The Royal Botanical Gardens and the Hamilton and Halton conservation authorities have long provided their members and the general public with natural areas, water access points, and school programming that provide opportunities for people to directly engage with the natural world.

The municipalities have also done much to increase public access to water. For example, the City of Hamilton is responsible for building and maintaining several kilometres of waterfront trail, and also hosts the annual Children's Water Festival for grade four students from across the city.

And newer initiatives are also providing both the big picture of the global importance of our watershed (Cootes to Escarpment Ecopark System) and more opportunities for citizens to get their hands literally dirty contributing to watershed restoration (Stewards of Cootes Watershed).

Too often our relationship with water is simply one of using what comes out of the tap and and then sending it down the drain. In the context of Hamilton Harbour, a body of water uniquely degraded and maligned since the 19th century, our task in improving public understanding and appreciation for water and water quality issues and challenges is all the more difficult.

Perhaps we might take some comfort in the fact that this is not a new problem. As early as 1862, the Hamilton Spectator editorialized that “We have been informed that the refuse from the coal oil refineries, which is emptied into the Bay, is having a very deleterious effect upon the fisheries at the Beach. It is said that the water, on certain mornings, is covered for a considerable distance with oil and the effect has been to drive away the fish from the Beach. The subject is not without difficulty. In the infancy of the coal oil industry, it would be inexpedient to place restrictions on the operations of refiners, but at the same time, it would be disastrous to the fishing industry if the fish are driven away by the noxious effluvia arising from the coal oil.” The subject remains difficult, to say the least, with so many more competing interests now for water and its uses, and so many more people living across the watershed.

Today, water quality issues are no longer simply local incidents of contaminated runoff from farm fields and construction sites, but they’re increasing global issues with local impacts from climate change to invasive species of plants and animals.

The Hamilton Harbour Remedial Action Plan serves as one of the few policy venues that pulls together a necessary variety of agency mandates to plan and act on these issues and at appropriate scales. In 2013, for example, the RAP began a process to investigate the issue of erosion and human activities that send sediment into surface water that then carries phosphorus downstream. Phosphorus is a natural and necessary part of an aquatic ecosystem, but too much of it in water can turn phosphorus into a contaminate. On the community side, BARC has run Yellow Fish Road for many years, a program that educates about the the connection between human activities and the health of downstream aquatic ecosystems by promoting “only rain down the drain” as “all drains lead to to fish”.