Freshwater research centre’s mandate includes restoring lakes
A new research and education facility built on the shores of the Detroit River in LaSalle was described Wednesday as the first of its kind in the Great Lakes region.
The new University of Windsor Freshwater Restoration Ecology Centre was unveiled on the riverfront at the foot of Laurier Drive with several professors and students of the school’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research and biology department on hand.
“I am really thrilled the centre is open officially,” said Trevor Pitcher, associate professor at GLIER. “It will give us an opportunity to work with people on restoration of the Great Lakes, but also gives us a chance to train the next generation of aquatic scientists to keep (the waterway) healthy — or even healthier going forward.
“Monitoring is not enough, we need to move into restoration.”
Given how the Great Lakes holds 84 per cent of North America’s freshwater and more than 3,500 species, the new centre will provide a “living lab” and “state-of-the-art infrastructure” for ecological and water quality study, said Michael Siu, the university’s vice-president of research and innovation.
Not only will university students work or study at the centre, but it will also often be used by area elementary school and high school students. Education can be provided on invasive species, water quality, spawning habitats and restoration efforts.
“A lot of different people will come through here,” Pitcher said. “There will be researchers, but even small children as young as Grade 3 will come to learn about their environment.”
The centre, which cost well over $1 million, has been in the works for a half-dozen years after originally conceived as an infrastructure stimulus project — a federal program that involved equal funding contributions from the federal, provincial and municipal governments.
The government grants paid for construction on the site, while the university has paid to retrofit and equip the structure.
Having a partnership with the university to create the centre means a lot to the town, said LaSalle Mayor Ken Antaya who reflected on how the land where the new centre sits used to be a marsh next to a baseball field in his childhood that swallowed a lot of baseballs as home runs.
“It’s not a marsh any more, but it still is a home run for the town,” Antaya said. “What we have done here in a partnership with the university is create an educational place one can be proud of.”
University graduate student Melena McCabe, whose studies focus on lake sturgeon conservation, talked of how both current students and those in generations to come will benefit from the new restoration ecology centre.
“There is not a facility like this anywhere else that will allow us to take our research to the next level.”