The Riverkeeper Meeting

I hosted the second of my guest-speaker meetings (Webinars, in effect) for my Environment Action group on November 9th. After the previous speaker (my daughter!) had described how scientists can assess the damage to our planet from outer space, by means of satellite technology, I said, making a bad pun, we were now "Zooming-in" to something closer to home, the state of our local rivers. Our speaker this time was Elizabeth Logue, "Riverkeeper". On Twitter, she calls herself @nibilogue. She is the policy developer and spokesperson for the Ottawa Riverkeeper organisation.

The Waterkeeper Alliance, soliciting the help of citizen scientists to keep waterways healthy,  is an international network of about 300 organisations, Ottawa Riverkeeper being one such. Its team of 12 organisers, plus their dedicated friends and assistants, are "the eyes and the ears of our watershed", monitoring the quality of the water we play in, swim in, fish in, and drink. Next year is its 20th Anniversary. 

Elizabeth loves the rivers, especially the Gatineau River on whose nearby banks she grew up. She still puts its rocks in her pockets, she said. At the start of her presentation she acknowledged her Indigenous heritage, the first guardians of this region being the Algonquin-Ashinabeg nation. She herself has Indigenous blood; her Irish grandfather married an Algonquin girl, and Elizabeth uses words from the native language. 'Thank you', in Algonquin, is Miigwetch.

The Ottawa or Kitchissippi River rises (not far from the source of the Gatineau River) in the Val d'Or region, meandering for about 1300 kilometres to Montreal where it merges with the St. Lawrence seaway. The Ottawa Riverkeeper sells maps of that watershed, an area that supplies drinking water to some two million people. The Ottawa River needs to be swimmable and fishable, in other words, safe. That means that sewage overflow must not go directly into it. The Riverkeeper team has been working with the municipalities of Ottawa and Gatineau to ensure that it doesn't, or that as little sewage seeps in as possible, so during these last few years a new sewer overflow pipe has been constructed beneath the city. (In fact it runs through our neighbourhood and we could hear the pile-drivers across the river from us making the hole for the tunnel in New Edinburgh park). When the construction was officially completed, on November 20th, Elizabeth Logue was standing alongside the Mayor and MP Catherine McKenna ("Climate Advocate" and Canada's Minister of Infrastructure and Communities). The Combined Sewage Storage Tunnel (CSST project) has been a $232.3 million investment, was constructed by the Tomlinson Group and is part of the Ottawa River Action Plan.

Other pollutants that ought to stay out of the river are the fertilizers and herbicides that kill the fish in it and are harmful to humans. Patches of algae blooms indicate where these contaminants are. Road salt is another problem, leaking into the drains through any small crack. After her presentation, in answer to a question about this, Elizabeth pointed out that it would be better to tackle the ice on city surfaces with urea rather than salt. 

At 58 sample sites where sediment had been investigated, micro-plastics have been detected. Nuclear waste is another huge hazard to health and biodiversity, from the reactors at Chalk River and Rolphton, near Renfrew (the latter was Canada's first nuclear reactor).

Other concerns of the Riverkeeper are the changing shoreline of the local rivers and the endangered species of flora and fauna. 50 (hydro) dams that have been constructed and / or decommissioned: the dams on the Lièvre are out of date; the Carillon dam is being reconstructed to include fish ladders. In collaboration with the Museum of Nature, the interaction of different species is closely observed. Zebra mussels are invasive. At risk are the American eel, the Lake Sturgeon carrying the embryos of hickory nut mussels, and the turtles. 

Groups of young people aged between 17 and 25 help with Watershed Health Assessment and Monitoring (WHAM) investigations, taking part in the Youth Water Leaders program. A recent initiative of the Federal Government is the Indigenous Guardians project. One Aboriginal community in our vicinity collaborates with scientists to help them understand the threats to fish, investigating mercury levels, for example, and there's a similar collaboration with people at the First Nations Reserve near Lake Timiskaming, upriver. 

Goal 6 of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals is the one about Clean Water and Sanitation. The UN declared this a Water Action Decade, so the Riverkeepers' work is very à propos. Canada's representative at the UN, Stéphane Dion, stated that "our future depends on a water-secure world," adding that "Canada is here to contribute, to be part of the solution."

Elizabeth left us with a hotline number to call if we have something to report concerning the rivers:

1-888-9KEEPER