Hope grows for cleaner Cootes Paradise as City of Hamilton pledges change in watershed plan

For a couple of months last spring, Hamilton's Cootes Paradise Marsh offered a glimpse of what's possible. 

The typically murky water was clear. 

"It's a bizarre thought — you could see the bottom, enjoy the bottom, which was a first in [most] people's lifetime," said Tys Theysmeyer, a senior director with the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG), a charitable organization that manages the marsh. 

"You would've been confused as to where you were because it was so nice." 

But after heavy rain in July, the westernmost tip of Lake Ontario reverted to its usual murky state that is not exactly good, but better than the decades before, Theysmeyer told CBC Hamilton in an interview this month.

The rain caused Chedoke Creek's sewage tanks to overflow into Cootes Paradise, while sediment and rubble poured in from eroding and flooding escarpment creeks. 

The extreme weather event demonstrated how, despite the RBG's decades-long attempts to clean up Cootes Paradise, it is still hampered by outside factors — namely climate change and city stormwater infrastructure, said Theysmeyer.

Watch | How Cootes Paradise has changed for the better since the 1970s:

That's why the RBG is paying particular attention to a new plan from the city to clean up its watersheds, Theysmeyer said, and by extension Cootes Paradise and Hamilton Harbour, as well as Grindstone Marsh in Burlington, Ont. 

City staff presented a plan to councillors earlier this month that includes 10 actions to prioritize in the next three years. It'll cost $7.5 million, which will be requested this coming budget cycle, says a staff report.

The plan will focus on reducing the amount of pollution collected in water that runs off parking lots, roads and driveways into sewers, creeks and rivers, and then into Cootes Paradise and Hamilton Harbour, said senior project manager Tim Crowley at the general issues committee meeting Nov. 6.

Some strategies will protect natural resources and add gardens and green space, all of which absorb stormwater, as well as reduce the amount of harmful nutrients used in fertilizers — like phosphorous and nitrogen — from entering waterways, and identify and reduce erosion in creeks, the staff report says. 

The city will also improve snow removal and street sweeping. 

The goal is to get Hamilton Harbour and Cootes Paradise healthy enough to no longer be considered an "area of concern" by the federal government, and among about 40 Great Lake regions that have experienced high levels of environmental harm in Canada and the U.S., says the report.