Awareness could help curb causeway litter

Adisturbing amount of litter along sections of the Chemong Lake causeway is a problem, but one that should be kept in perspective.

One perspective is historical: the quantity of plastic bags, old worm containers and even adult diapers on the rocky shoreline of the James A. Gifford Causeway is not nearly as bad as it was 20 years ago.

Neither is the uproar, in part because back then Peterborough County hired summer students to clean up the litter, put more garbage bins where anglers congregated and launched a public education campaign. Two-thirds of that program continues and has been effective.

That leads to a positive point of perspective: public commentary hasn’t been primarily directed at “Asian fishermen” as it was two decades ago.

Neither of those important qualifiers should, however, be used to mask the problem. Garbage along the causeway link between Bridgenorth and Ennismore needs to be cleaned up to the highest degree possible, and anglers who leave some of it behind need to be curtailed.

The current campaign began after Brad Sinclair, who lives nearby, posted on Facebook a video he shot of the garbage-strewn causeway shoreline during an morning paddle in his kayak.

A lot of the ensuing social media commentary focused on legal enforcement as a solution: ticket and fine anyone who litters, or go further and ban fishing along the cause- way.

Using the long arm of the law might seem like simple and practical but the arm just isn’t that long. Ticketing requires someone on site the catch the litterer in the act. Even if Peterborough County had the money, enforcement officers couldn’t effectively covering the entire shoreline.

Banning fishing would be overkill. Most anglers don’t litter, and the causeway is one of few places in the Kawarthas where someone who doesn’t own a boat can get out onto a lake. Taking away that opportunity would be unfair.

And there would be the same problem with enforcement.

A voluntary public clean-up program along the lines of the Adopt-a-Road campaign would be wonderful and has already happened to some degree. However that’s likely not a long-term solution.

It is also not realistic to expect summer students and county work crews to scramble along the steepest, rockiest areas of shoreline that are the problem.

The best possible solution hasn’t changed from 20 years ago: education and public awareness aimed at both local anglers and visitors from the GTA. Beef up signage, in as many languages as necessary, explaining littering is illegal and harmful. Go back to working with Asian-Canadian communities in the GTA to get that message across.

Education won’t end littering but it helped curtail the problem before and can again.