Bay of Quinte challenges being re-designated

Two of the Bay of Quinte’s environmental challenges are to be redesignated after decades of rehabilitation efforts.

Sarah Midlane-Jones, communications officer for the Bay of Quinte Remedial Action Plan, said challenges of “fish tumours and other deformities” and “restrictions on dredging activities” are in the re-designation process to have their status changed to “unimpaired.”

The Bay of Quinte Remedial Action Plan (BQRAP) Restoration Council made the announcement Tuesday.

All eleven environmental challenges attributed to the Bay of Quinte have to undergo this redesignation process to have their status changed to unimpaired. When this process is complete, the Bay of Quinte can be taken off the Great Lakes Areas of Concern list.

“This is the start of an exciting process for the BQRAP after decades of rehabilitating the Bay,” said Glenda Rodgers, Lower Trent Conservation and co-chair of the restoration council. “We have reached the point where we can start removing the impaired status of certain environmental challenges. This is a testament to the hard work and dedication of federal, provincial, and municipal partners working in conjunction with industry, agriculture and the public towards the common goal of restoring the Bay’s ecosystem.”

The draft Redesignation Reports have been approved by the BQRAP Restoration Council to be circulated for public input, which is a vital component of the redesignation process.
Restoration Council will review and address all comments.

Next, the reports will be sent to Environment Canada and the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change for final review. At this stage, additional technical review or specific work can be requested, or the reports will be approved. Once approved, the reports are sent to the governments of Canada and Ontario to seek formal concurrence on the redesignation. Once both governments agree, these two environmental challenges will be considered unimpaired.

The final reports and supporting information can be found on the BQRAP web site – www.bqrap.ca. Fill in the survey confirming that you support/do not support the recommendation to change the status of these environmental challenges to unimpaired. Comments and questions can also be emailed to: smidlanejones@bqrap.ca by Monday, Feb. 8, 2016

The Bay of Quinte Remedial Action Plan is in partnership locally with Lower Trent Conservation and Quinte Conservation