Swimming Water Quality in Tiny
By Judith Grant

Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit Report: This covered basics – reasons for posting a beach, monitoring period (mid-June to the end of August), conditions noted at the time of sampling (sampling time, wind direction, size of waves, water temperature, water clarity, rainfall, number of bathers and waterfowl). The conclusion was that elevated E. coli counts occurred primarily in July and August when there had been rain in the previous 24 hours, an onshore wind, water temperature above 17 degrees C, muted sunlight, low water clarity, and high wave action.

Severn Sound Environmental Association Report: Tipping bucket rain gauges have been installed at several township buildings. As these monitor rainfall at five-minute intervals, it is now possible to assess the impact of rain on particular beaches more accurately.

The SSEA sampled the streams at Balm Beach for nitrate and phosphorous and E. coli levels. They found that nitrates were higher than they should be, phosphorous was generally within recommended guidelines, while E. coli counts rose to unacceptable levels as the streams passed through the built up area near the beach.

Work on chemistry, temperature, and E. coli and flow was done along the length of Lafontaine Creek, which emerges on the shore south of Concession Road 13. One tributary south of the 13th had very elevated counts. More work is to be done on this tributary in the summer of 2006. A water level gauge has been installed in the Pennorth area to monitor flow in the creek.

Some investigation was done on green, sponge-like stuff in the water at Lafontaine Beach, where rock groynes have created sheltered areas with little renewal of the water and summer water temperatures rise to as much as 31 degrees.

Only a little work was been done about the impact of the Nottawasaga River on water quality at Woodland Beach.

Environment Canada: Allan Crowe, of Environment Canada and a resident of Woodland Beach, did some work on ground water and on pollution at Woodland and Balm Beaches in what he calls the “swash zone” – the area at the edge of the bay where waves wash back and forth. There were high E. coli counts in this area, but it was not clear whether this had any impact on swimming water quality further out in the Bay. Mr. Crowe intends to investigate further the ground water and the swash zone at Balm.

FoTTSA: The Federation wrote a letter to Council on January 23 urging Council to continue to fund investigation into the causes of the pollution and remedies for it, and asking for details about the investigative work SSEA would undertake this summer. The letter also asked that investigative work be linked more thoroughly with the septic inspection program, and that, once an area had been given a clean bill of septic system health, its streams be monitored officially for a season to ensure that sources of pollution have been dealt with.

We asked the Township to create appropriate signs for stream outflows that have high E. coli counts, and we requested that the data accumulated each summer by the SMDHU be released to us each September for entry into a comprehensive spreadsheet of each summer’s swimming water data.

Some points have been addressed:
• $25,000 has been set aside for investigative work this summer
• the SSEA will continue working on the Balm and Lafontaine streams, and will also work on the stream that emerges at the 6th
• data will be released each fall

But:
• there is no agreement to provide wording for signs in stream outflows
• there is no clear commitment to check the quality of stream water in stretches of the shore where all septic systems are felt to be in good working order.

WATER ISSUES MEETING. In March, Township staff arranged a meeting that included Ruth Coursey (Clerk/CAO), Henk Blom (Public Works Manager – beach posting), Keith Sherman (SSEA – water investigation), Bernie Mayer and Bruce Beauchamp (SMDHU – swimming water sampling), Bill Goodale (CC Tatham & Associates – septic re-inspection) and Judith Grant (FoTTSA – volunteer water program). The intention was that there be an exchange of information among all those involved in some way with swimming water quality.

It succeeded admirably.
• The Health Unit got a better sense of the way the volunteer water-sampling program works.
• The Health Unit and the Public Works Department got a better grasp of each other’s problems with regard to the timely posting of beaches.
• The reasons for the intractability of pollution in the north Balm stream became clear (septic tile beds not fully above the water table, and weeping tiles draining compromised ground water into the stream).
• CC Tatham has signed off on only a small stretch of the shore (from Concession Rd. 9 to Balm Beach Road).
• 80% of septic system problems are discovered as the result of pumping and inspecting holding tanks.

Some points re lawns near the water:
• Geese are attracted to short grass.
• Herbicides and fertilizers should not be used near the shore. (Springwater has forbidden the cosmetic use of herbicides and fertilizers.)
• The bloom of algae at the 16th Concession probably feeds on herbicides and fertilizers from lawns.
• Bulldozing dunes is a bad move, as it reduces the distance to the water table.