Niagara River rebounds
Annie Michaud, left, and Valerie Cromie stand at Queenston Heights Park overlooking the Niagara River. Matt Day/QMI Agency
What a difference a quarter century has made for the Niagara River.
Sail back to the 1970s, and the situation was a toxic mess.
The Love Canal area in Niagara Falls, N.Y. was so chemically degraded, it was declared a U.S. federal health emergency. Hundreds of residents were relocated.
Back then, about 700 industries discharged 250 million gallons of wastewater into the river each day.
By 1987, public outrage and government action in Canada and the U.S. gelled to create river Remedial Action Plans for both countries.
Coordinated effort helped turn the tide dramatically.
“It has been an incredible change,” said Niagara College professor and study author Annie Michaud.
“And it’s been a great success story,” she said. “I think if people looked back to how the river was then and how it is now, they’d see a huge improvement in the overall health of the watershed and quality.”
On Thursday, Brock University’s Niagara Community Observatory formally released a policy brief on the study by Michaud, a professor at Niagara College’s school of environmental and horticultural studies.
Michaud’s findings in “The Niagara River Remedial Action Plan: 25 Years of Environmental Restoration” show a staggering turnaround.
* a 99% reduction of discharges from Ontario municipal and industrial sources
* huge reductions in toxic chemicals
* a cleanup of contaminated sediments, and a special wastewater treatment facility in Niagara Falls
* three of four public beaches in the river “area of concern” meeting targets for safe swimming
Michaud said as a result of collaborations by government authorities on both sides of the river “many of those direct (pollutant) sources have been identified and abated.
“The improvement of water quality really is the big success story for the Niagara River Remedial Action Plan,” she said.
Some of that work — part of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement — included actual removal of contaminated sediments and regulation to reduce pollutant discharges.
“We can’t be complacent, there is more work to be done,” she adds about the next phase of the plan, which likely continues until 2015.
It includes reversing harmful effects on fish and wildlife, and reducing undesirable algae and fish and wildlife habitat loss.
That work will involve habitat restoration and water-quality improvement projects to deal with high nutrients and low oxygen in the Welland River watershed.
The hope is ultimately the river plan will be a success and the area officially “delisted” as a Great Lakes Basin degraded area of concern.
Valerie Cromie, the Ontario side coordinator of the Niagara River Remedial Action Plan, said fish populations in the area are being assessed right now.
Should delisting happen, “it would mean through the action plan, we will have brought the quality of the ecosystem up to a level comparable to the surrounding areas,” Cromie said.
As for impacts on people: “lots of benefits from clean water,” she said. “And better fish consumptions advisories.”
“We’ve also seen tremendous impacts for fish and wildlife habitat.”
Niagara River water facts:
- 58 km. long, flows between Canada and the U.S.
- Niagara River is an integral part of the largest freshwater system on earth: the Great Lakes basin
- average flow rate of 5,700 cubic meters per second
- accounts for 83 percent of the water flowing into Lake Ontario
- in Niagara, about 130,000 people rely on the Niagara River and Lake Ontario for drinking water — millions in Ontario do so
Benefits to humans as the result of Niagara River watershed’s clean-up:
- safer drinking water
- less contamination for area residents and people using the waterway recreationally
- public beaches can stay open
- a natural ecosystem rebounds
- property values increase