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Snapshot
summary of our accomplishments
Soil & Water Conservation Society of Metro Halifax (SWCSMH), and OneDrive
Updated: January 31,
2020
Compliments received
Contents (not yet complete):
Monitoring
of the Sackville River watershed
We monitored the Little
Sackville River at sub-watershed critical points for around seven (7) non-consecutive years, as needed, as well
as aspects to do with the Middle Sackville Landfill
dating back to the mid-1980s.
Impromptu
construction monitoring
We carried out impromptu construction
monitoring, and this was primarily for TSS and/or Turbidity during
select major construction events, mostly in the urban HRM area for this
phase of our activities, and concentrated on major construction
projects in Dartmouth and Cole Harbour and other fringe urban areas.
Educational
television shows
During the years 1988 to 1996, we produced three hundred and twenty three
(323) weekly, mostly educational and scientific, Community Cable Tv shows under the banners of "In
Harmony With Nature", "Science Is Your World", and "Science &
Nature".
Public
presentations
We held approximately twenty (20)
extensive
educational presentations all around HRM and its previous municipalities
during the 1990s to which the public was cordially invited through
media adverts and in a few cases by house-to-house distribution of
pamphlets. The best attended was in the Hubley area when around one
hundred (100) people attended and the least attended was in Waverley
where only five (5) attended; but the Waverley one was the second one
as the first presentation at Waverley was attended by around twenty
(20) residents!
- We made three (3) by_invitation_only presentations to the Nova Scotia Dept. of Environment at their Terminal
Road HQ, and approx. ten (10) other by_invitation_only presentations at
various offices/buildings of the HRM.
Physical
cleanups of lakes
We are not all wrapped up in scientific
aspects exclusively though; during the National Environment Weeks
(always first week of June), we spearheaded significant littoral and
the underwater physical cleanups of the following lakes:--
-
Kearney Lake in Halifax on June 02, 1991
-
Settle Lake in Dartmouth on June 04, 1994
-
Maynard Lake in Dartmouth on June 01,
2002, and on June 05, 2004
- ......... local
residents also took considerable leadership! We have participated in
community physical cleanups organized by others as well.
- We have spearheaded the first ever BST at a lake in Nova Scotia
in
partnership with the Environmental Management Services (EMS) of HRM.
This is to establish the primary source of fecal pollution at the Maynard Lake Beach.
Tangible
benefits derived by various entities from our research
Halifax
Regional Municipality (HRM); N.S.
Dept. of the Environment (NSE); Stakeholder groups and other agencies; select consultants; and undergraduate and
graduate students
Significant
benefits to the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) as well as to the
former Halifax County Municipality:
A sampling from the sixty
(60) of the emails
received from HRM’s staff asking for info from Applied Limnologist,
Shalom M. Mandaville
Benefits derived
by the Nova Scotia Environment (NSE):
A sampling from the thirty (30) of the emails
received from NSEL’s staff asking for info from applied limnologist,
Shalom M. Mandaville
Benefits to
stakeholder groups and other agencies:
Various local stakeholder groups
operating (or operated) within several HRM districts, university
students/professors, vocational school students
working for them as well as other Government agencies (e.g,
the DFO; Environment Canada) have also utilized our scientific reports
and
data; example undeleted emails that are still in our
possession, not all, have been placed in our web space:
- A significant example has been the
Woodens River Watershed Environmental Organisation (WRWEO) in their
recent attempts to carry out a hypolimnetic aeration
of Sheldrake Lake
- Examples of other stakeholder groups (that we are aware of)
have been the
Friends of McIntosh Run, Spryfield; Springfield Lake Watch, Middle
Sackville; Second Lake Park group, Sackville; Williams Lake
Conservation Society, Jollymore
- University students working on partnership projects for the
Sackville Rivers Association (SRA) have also been the beneficiaries
Benefits derived
by select consultants:
Use of our formal studies as well as of
our
archive data by professional consultants and by university
professors/institutes:
- Several professional engineering and
planning consulting firms working for the HRM and its previous
municipal units have utilized some of our formal reports and select
archive data in their formal studies for the municipalities;
e.g., CBCL Consultants, Porter Dillon, Dillon, Inc., Loucks
Oceanography, Griffiths Muecke & Assocs., Jacques Environmental,
among those we are aware of
- The Centre for Water Resources Studies (CWRS) of
Dalhousie University has also used our reports and data in
some of their consulting jobs
Most enquiries received have been
via extensive phone calls. A sampling from the emails
received from consultants asking for info from applied limnologist,
Shalom M. Mandaville
Assistance to
undergraduate and graduate students:
Several
requests
we
received since 1990 were by phone, but there have been some via emails; example emails have
been placed in our web
space
- We provided considerable assistance to
over 100 students by providing data, reports and sometimes financial
assistance in meeting out of pocket assistance; this has been mostly to
students in the Departments of Biology, the School for Resource and
Environmental Studies (SRES), and the Marine Affairs Program at
Dalhousie University, and to a lesser extent at St. Mary's University
- At the invitation of various professors, we have given formal
lectures in Limnology, principally at Dalhousie University
Our
objectives
- (a) To research,
synthesize
and compile scientific literature, carry out monitoring programs, carry
out case studies, carry out public education programs on the visual as
well as the printed media, lobby regulatory agencies, and others on a
voluntary/partnership basis. In addition, if time and opportunity
permit, to carry out research on a scientific as well as a technical
basis independently, and/or in collaboration with private and public
institutions, and
- (b) To
assist and advice individuals, groups, organizations, cities and towns,
and county, and provincial, federal, and international governments in
reducing the costly waste of land and water resources and in putting to
good use these assets.
And primarily concentrate in
Theoretical/Applied Limnology (i.e. scientific study of lakes and
running waters) as well as in Lake Management and Freshwater Benthic
Ecology. Also entering the domain of sustainable development
(freshwater/marine eco-systems).
We salute the Chebucto
Community Net (CCN) of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada for
hosting our web site, and we applaud its volunteers for their devotion
in making `CCN' the best community net in the world