A green cleanup call
Separate studies raise alarm over city’s ravine system and inner harbour
Toronto’s crown jewels — the inner harbour where kayakers paddle and boats sail in summer, and the ravine system that underpins the city — are both in need of urgent care, according to two new environmental reports.
“I would characterize it as fragile,” Krystyn Tully, vice-president of Swim Drink Fish Canada, said of the inner harbour, the area between the city shoreline and the Toronto Islands.
The inner harbour is vulnerable to sewage contamination, especially during and after rainstorms, and this past summer was particularly bad, Tully said.
The organization’s monitoring program documented a consistent pattern of extremely high levels of E. coli — an indicator of sewage — in the water over the summer, on several occasions exceeding the city standard by 241 times.
There are nine sewer outfalls in the inner harbour and, over the entire summer, the nine sites failed recreational water-quality limits 44 per cent of the time.
The inner harbour is separate from the local beaches, which are closely monitored by the city during the summer and are generally safe for swimming.
The problem was particularly acute after a storm on Aug. 7 that caused widespread flooding along Queens Quay and Lakeshore Blvd.
After the storm, the organization counted 32 rats, 31 fish, five pigeons, two raccoons, two cormorants and an opossum dead in the lake.
While the city is working on a long-term master plan to improve the situation, the inner harbour is often so polluted it could make people who swim in it, or who fall into it while boating or kayaking, sick with gastrointestinal issues, Tully said.
She said these problems can takes several days to manifest, so people wouldn’t necessarily make the connection between the water and their illness.
Washing thoroughly with soap and water after coming into contact with the water in the inner harbour would prevent illness, Tully said. The city needs to do more to monitor water quality in the inner harbour and make people more aware of the problem, Tully said. A Toronto Water spokesperson said the city is committed to protecting and restoring Lake Ontario and is engaged in a 25-year, $2-billion infrastructure program that will combat the sewage problem.
“To start monitoring these outfalls with consistency and accuracy would be an expensive and timely task — and may not provide information beyond what is already understood: There is a very strong correlation between heavy rainfall and combined sewers overflowing,” spokesperson Ellen Leesti said.
The report on the inner harbour comes on the heels of a study of Toronto’s ravines, released last week. It found that over the past 40 years, the biodiversity and
ecological health of ravines has declined to a critical level and is now likely on the edge of collapse. “If we do not immediately get serious, align all our efforts with supportive city policy, then the ravines will decline beyond recovery,” according to the report by the University of Toronto’s faculty of forestry.
The report notes Toronto has been built over, through and around a massive ravine ecosystem that still covers 17 per cent of the city — more than 11,000 hectares of land.
Invasive plants now dominate large expanses of the ravine, from the forest floor to the top of the trees, it found.
Along with other non-native trees, the highly invasive Norway maple, originally planted as a street tree, has increased its canopy cover from about 10 per cent in the 1970s to 40 per cent in 2017. Norway maples grow quickly and produce dense shade that does not promote undergrowth.
The survey found that 50 per cent of ground-cover plant species were non-native.
Invasive Japanese knotweed and dog-strangling vine are now present in more than 95 per cent of the forest floor surveyed, while Ontario’s official flower, the trillium, is hard to find. The report concluded that ravine policies need more explicit language and stronger enforcement. “If we move as fast as we can, there’s a probability that it’s too late in some areas,” said Eric Davies, a University of Toronto forest ecology PhD student and one of the researchers.
Jane Arbour, a spokesperson in the city’s parks, forestry and recreation division, said city staff, together with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, are reviewing the findings of the report.
“The city is committed to protecting … and improving the ecological health and resilience of these natural spaces, and continues to make investments to manage the multiple pressures facing ravines.”
RAVINES from GT1