Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat News
The Newsletter of the Great Lakes
Aquatic Habitat Network and Fund
The Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat News is the newsletter of the Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat Network and Fund, published five times per year. The News is intended to provide a forum for the free exchange of ideas among citizens and organizations working to protect aquatic habitats in the Great Lakes Basin.
Volume 14, Number 3 • Summer 2006
Lake Superior
Basin Update
Time to Clean up the St. Mary’s River
By Joanie McGuffin, Lake Superior Conservancy and Watershed Council
The St. Mary’s River is the only natural
outflow of water from Lake Superior to
the lower Great Lakes. Four hundred
years ago the First Nations people knew
it for a rich summer harvest of whitefish
and pure waters. Now the facts are
quite different. The River became the
international border with the twin cities
of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan and Sault
Ste. Marie, Ontario. One of the large islands situated in the river,
sugar Island, is on the US side of the border, and is located
downstream of Sault Ste. Marie,Ontario’s east end sewage plant.
The river current flows by the sewage plant, on down to the First
Nations community of Garden River at Bell Point, and then across
to the tip of Sugar Island.
Both Tony McLain and Wayne Welch, residents on the south end
of Sugar Island, are keen boaters who love the Great lakes. Their
backyards stretch down to the river’s edge where each of them
has located a boat slip. The water, most of the time, is clear and
swimable. Indeed when Wayne’s children and grandchildren
arrive for a summer’s family gathering, swimming and boating
are a big part of the fun. But a lifelong enjoyment of the river has
been tainted on the days when the boat slip is filled with a thick
“chocolate shake-like” substance (as shown in the photograph).
A fecal coliform count reveals numbers in parts per million, far
surpassing Michigan’s beach closure law. (These rod-shaped
bacteria, normally found in the colons of humans and animals,
pose a serious health hazard in a water supply.) When the
bacteria count is this high, the water is no longer safe or
appealing for recreational activities, not to mention the health
and welfare of all the creatures that are sustained by the river
from aquatic insects, to birds, fish and mammals.
Wayne Welch, now in his 60’s, lives in a house next to the one he
was born in. His great grandfather and his grandfather farmed
the land on Sugar Island. Over fifty years ago when the sewage
plant was built, in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario’s east end, it was a
primary treatment plant (separation of solids). Up until recently,it
was operating this way. Half a century of accumulated waste on
the St. Mary’s river bottom re-surfaces regularly as large, dark
cruddy chunks known as “pop-up”. Due to the direction of the
river current, the boat slips of Tony and Wayne catch whatever the
current is carrying. Sometimes it is graphically obvious human
waste like condoms and oil slicks, or the less source-specific thick
brown substance resembling the sludge in the sewage treatment
plant material, and the pop-up from the river bottom.
Photographs and water samples of the pollution have been taken
to verify the extent of the problem. Being an international
situation, follow-through with the appropriate persons and
agencies needs to take place to insure that the riparian rights of
those living in the affected area are fulfilled.
The Lake Superior Conservancy and Watershed Council’s (LSCWC)
Executive Director, Brian Christi, is meeting with the Ontario
Environmental Commissioner to review the status of the River
and the clean up work that needs to be done. The St. Mary’s River
is still listed as a hot spot in the Remedial Action Plan (RAP) as
established by the Binational Committee for the Great Lakes.
Brian will also meet with Mike Ripley, Chairman of the Binational
Public Advisory Council of the St. Mary’s River, who also
represents the Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority. These
meetings will emphasize the need for Federal, Provincial, and
State funds to continue work that was started but never finished.
The St. Mary’s River is one of 29 rivers in Canada designated as a
Heritage River. Brian is meeting with the Friends of the St. Mary’s
to check out the Heritage status and see if the LSCWC can be of
assistance in their reporting requirements and to review what
Heritage status means. LSCWC’s goal for these meetings is to put
into motion action to clean up the River. It has been polluted way
to long.
For more information:
Ruth O’Gawa, Lake Superior Conservancy and Watershed Council
319 Lincoln Place, Petoskey, MI 49770
PH: (231) 347-9387 • E-mail: rgogawa@freeway.net
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