Algae ‘cesspool’ hits Hamilton shore
Resident describes blob as stinking sludge while city works to fix issue
The city will try everything from sludge vacuums to underwater bubble-makers in its struggle against an especially stinky algae attack that is driving boaters and park users away from the harbour.
Disgusted residents are increasingly complaining to the city this month and questioning whether a sewage spill is to blame for the thick mats of mould-dotted, greenish-brown goo floating along the recreational waterfront and marina docks.
The floating brown blobs “look like sewage (and) smells like sewage,” said upset boater Rob Levo, who spurred a flurry of political debate with a widely circulated email criticizing the city’s marina as a “cesspool of stinking sludge” during the tourist-magnet SuperCrawl weekend.
He pointed incredulously to the city’s multimillion-dollar effort to transform industrial Pier 8 into a new community with 1,300 new homes. “How can we as citizens of Hamilton allow this to continue?” he asked.
The city has investigated those spill allegations and even submitted four dead water birds to the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources to see if they were killed by the floating mess.
But the city has recorded no sewage spills near the recreational harbour and officials say the smelly problem is a severe example of a familiar foe: algae that builds up across the harbour every summer.
The sewage smell comes from dead, rotting algae, likely exacerbated by lots of hot weather combined with too little rain and water circulation, said Eric Mathews, a manager of safe water for the department.
Still, the city recognizes this year’s crop of odoriferous algae is “uniquely bad” and the hunt is on for a contractor to try “skimming” and vacuuming up the worst of the rotting algae in strategic locations, said public works head Dan McKinnon.
He said he cannot recall the last time the city tried such a strategy.
The city is also adding more “bubblers” along the waterfront — basically underwater aeration machines — to try to help break up the algae, said parks head Kara Bunn.
The city has a provincial permit to use pesticides to kill algae and at least one marina group has done so this summer. But killing more plants — which would then rot — is not viewed as a solution to the stench, she said.
Hamilton is also talking to other waterfront cities about possible solutions and exploring whether it can improve water circulation at algae hot spots via upcoming shoreline repairs.
The rotting reek creates a “uniquely distorted perception of what is otherwise an improving picture” for Hamilton harbour, suggested Chris McLaughlin, who heads the Bay Area Restoration Council.