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We
congratulate Metro News on your superb article in the Tuesday edition
of November 09, 2010. Since this is supposed to be in the form of a
letter rather than a treatise on professional lake management, we will
summarize it but provide select web links to our numerous web pages,
some scientific, and some general. Clicking on the underlined words
will launch the relevant web pages.
Over the
last 25 years, we have been concerned about the degradation
in the water quality of not only certain urbanized and urbanizing
lakes within the present HRM (
As mostly
volunteers with varied scientific backgrounds, we carried out some
advanced scientific research which falls under the umbrella of Applied
Limnology as follows: We carried out Predictive Modelling of
several parameters in one thousand five hundred (1,500) lakes and ponds
in four (4) counties of Nova Scotia; studied the phytoplankton assemblages
for early warning signals; of latterly, we have been concentrating in
the ever important studies of zoobenthos
(the organisms present in the bottom sediments); on chironomid
mentum deformities (this is quite specialized and looks at the
cumulative effects of multiple
stressors); and to a lesser degree in phytobenthos (algal
composition in the bottom sediments).
On
occasions, we also send `reference collections’ to leading worldwide
authorities for independent peer reviews!
With our
predictive modelling of multiple parameters, we were able to even
predict issues prior to their manifestation, for e.g., the increasing
weed growth in several
We had
indeed forewarned the HRM (Cc’d the Province as always) a few years ago
about the impending possibility via atleast five (5) detailed emails.
There is
little point in crying after‑the‑fact; the whole idea is to work on
prevention as solutions can be quite costly and not permanent as proven
time and time again elsewhere in the world where they spend hundreds of
millions of dollars (200 of our associate‑scientists live in the USA
and elsewhere, and they caution us on too much optimism as most claims
of `restoration’ have never been proven in the long term)!
We have
continuously appraised our Provincial Environment
Dept., as well as the present HRM, the
former City of Dartmouth, and the former Halifax County.
At one
time, we had also written detailed scientific letters to two formers
ministers of the federal agency, Environment Canada, namely the Hon.
Jean Charest and the Hon. Shiela Copps. Both were courteous but they
made it abundantly clear that management/protection of freshwater lakes
in Nova Scotia was the total responsibility of the Province of Nova
Scotia in partnership with the municipalities.
We are
primarily a scientific society of approx. 400 associates out of which
200 are domiciled across
Thank you
all for reading and thanks for Metro News in publishing it!
(Clicking
on the underlined words will launch the relevant web pages)
Shalom M. Mandaville Post-Grad Dip.,
“Narrative on Water Quality”;
“Our
sampling protocols, in brief”; and a 30-minute video on "Environmental
Impact on Water Courses” in WMV
format!
Chair,
Soil & Water Conservation Society of Metro Halifax-(Homepage), a
multi-discipline scientific/technical stakeholder group
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