View Item No. 15.3.2, Halifax Regional Council November 12, 2024
This document includes a Staff Report dated Apr 22, 2024, and the full LakeWatchers State of the Lakes Report, 2022-2023 SAMPLING YEARS
“Environment and Sustainability Standing Committee received a staff recommendation report dated April
22, 2024 to consider an in-depth analysis of the 2022-23 LakeWatchers program, a program initiated to monitor the water quality of 73 lakes in Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM).
“The Environment and Sustainability Standing Committee recommends that Halifax Regional Council:
1. Direct the Chief Administrative Officer to initiate a review of the Municipality’s current Salt Management Plan guided by the Syntheses of Best Practices Road Salt Management.
2. Direct the Chief Administrative Officer to investigate policy options for setbacks for new stormwater discharge locations into natural waterbodies and consider options for naturalization and/or Low Impact Development (LID) features at existing stormwater discharge locations around priority lakes.
3. Request that the Mayor write a letter to the Province of Nova Scotia’s Minster of Environment and Climate Change and the Halifax Regional Water Commission, supporting and encouraging the timely development of provincial stormwater quality standards” ”
The video recording begins with a presentation by Chris Kennedy, Coordinator of the LakeWatchers Program. The Motion with the recommendations above passed 17:0 (4:51:00).
A question was asked about use of Volunteers in lake monitoring versus consultants – the program makes use of volunteers as much as possible with substantive cost-savings; the question related to reliability of the volunteers. Kennedy said volunteers are trained by LakeWatchers and the data are fully equivalent to those obtained by consultants.