Deep water oxygen levels in Sandy Lake towards the end of the summer stratification period. (Click on image for larger version.) These data, and other Water Quality data we collected or compiled were “ignored” in the NS Gov/HRM Background Studies for Sandy Lake released Jan 27, 2025. View Post of July 25, 2025 for details.
In a message to the Premier in the fall of 2024, revealed in a FOIPOP, a senior executive with Clayton Developments Ltd contended that the Sandy Lake limnological observations are “pseudo-science” conducted “on behalf of the residents currently residing on Sandy Lake”.
The pseudo-science includes, apparently, observations conducted under the direction of and according to the protocols of the Halifax’s LakeWatchers program (2022 onwards) and observations obtained entirely independently by Dalhousie University researchers in 2021.
It is these observations that recorded very low deep water oxygen values (<2 mg/L); a Clayton rep. told me that they could not confirm the low oxygen values though their own, confidential observations. Coincidentally or not, the NS Gov/HRM sponsored Sandy Lake Watershed Study and Stormwater Management Plan, released Jan 27, 2025, cites none of these limnological observations; the consultants’ limnological profiles, obtained in 2023 , extended to only 10 m depth, not sufficient to characterize this dimictic lake of max. depth 21 m.
To date my efforts to discuss this matter in person at the provincial and municipal levels have been rejected, I am told only that the info would be passed on to the appropriate personnel/agencies for consideration in relation to the Sandy Lake Special Planning Area development.