Interim Water Report: Quality Is Still an Issue at Woodland Beach
By Judith Grant

Relative to 2001, when we first began shore-wide water quality monitoring, it looks as if bay and lake swimming water quality in Tiny Township is improving, with some exceptions.

At the time of writing (September 26th), we did not yet have access to the summer’s results from the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit, which monitors 15 beaches in Tiny. The only thing we know about them is that the Health Unit issued advisories to the Township to post notices against swimming at particular beaches nine times this summer, when only one advisory was issued in 2007. This might suggest that water quality was worse this year than last.

We do have the full results available from the sampling by FoTTSA volunteers at 20 beaches, by park staff at Awenda’s four beaches, and by counsellors at Camp Marygrove. They show that E. coli counts have improved in the streams in Concession 1 and at Tamarack Trail in Concession 2, in Little Brook in Concession 9, possibly in the stream just north of Concession 11 and certainly in the one a little farther north and the stream at Charlebois just north of the 19th Concession.

They also show that water quality has improved at many bay sampling locations. However, there are a couple of places of real concern. At the south end of Pennorth’s beach in the 13th Concession, a swimming-depth sampling location had significantly elevated counts for three of the four weeks of August and a toddler-depth site had elevated counts for seven of the eight weeks that samples were taken. Both locations are close to an area where large numbers of Canada geese congregated in August.

The situation at Woodland Beach (which extends the full length of the first and second concessions) is still not good. At the two bay sampling points in Concession 1, E. coli counts usually rise above 100 on three of the nine sampling days of the summer. This year was no exception. Similarly Woodland Beach Park, which lies at the south end of the second concession, is usually posted at least two or three times a summer; this year was no exception.

The water quality at Tamarack Trail and Siesta Drive at the north end of Concession 2 has improved. Whereas in the first year of sampling seven of the nine weeks at Tamarack Trail had E. coli numbers above 100, this year only five of the nine samples were over 100, and they were not over by nearly as much.

Water quality problems extend northward around Spratt Point to Laurel Avenue and Edmore Beach. After our Volunteer Program discovered consistently elevated E. coli numbers there in 2001, the Health Unit added Concession 3/Laurel to its list of beaches. An advisory was posted at Concession 3 twice this year.

In 2004, the Severn Sound Environmental Association, investigating the sources of pollution along Tiny’s beaches, took aerial photographs of a plume of silt emerging from the Nottawasaga River a mile or so south of Tiny and being carried by currents up the shore toward Spratt Point in Concession 3. All along the way silt drops to the bottom, giving bacteria places to hide from the cleansing power of the ultraviolet component of sunlight. When swimmers and waves stir it up, E. coli counts in the water rise.

We’ve known about this since 2005 – but nothing effective has been done. We think that the time has come for our Council to insist that the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority clean up the river whose watershed it manages.

The SSEA knows how to do this. It managed to get the Wye River cleaned up by encouraging farmers to keep their livestock, fertilizers, and manure well back from the river and to halt bank erosion by planting vegetation.

As soon as the Health Unit releases its data and it is entered into our usual Township-wide spreadsheet, we will post the 2008 results on www.tinycottager.org under “Water Reports”.