It was swamped with garbage. Now there are swimmers in this Toronto lake basin
CBC
Just months ago, Steve Mann was scooping stinky garbage and hauling decomposing animal carcasses out of the Peter Street Basin.
Now, he’s swimming in it.
The University of Toronto professor has made it his mission to clean up the strange pool of lake water at the base of condos off of Queens Quay, across from HTO Park.
“The stench here was so unbearable, people didn’t even want to come near it,” said Mann. “In places, it did not even look like a lake. It looked more like a pile of garbage.”
Mann stumbled upon the basin while looking for new, accessible places to swim. He has a back injury and swam almost every day on Ontario Place’s West Island to help rehab his spine. When access was barred and the island razed for construction of the controversial Therme spa, he needed a new place to go.
“I saw this empty place that no one was using, but it was absolutely filled with garbage,” he said.
So Mann and an eager team of volunteers, including many of his students, started cleaning, hauling bags and bags of garbage out of the basin. They experimented using tech — including robot submarines — but there was so much trash, pool nets proved the most efficient method.
Mann kept an eye on E. coli levels, testing in his university lab and working with professors who specialize in water quality. Toronto follows a strict water quality standard; when lake water hits 100 E. coli per 100 milliliters, swimming is deemed unsafe.
Recently, Mann’s been seeing samples between seven and 10 E. coli per 100 millilitres at the basin.
“Not only within limits but actually by more than a factor of 10,” he proudly proclaimed, before stripping into a speedo and taking a dip.
Not all of his students are as keen to wade in.
“In the cold, I like to stay warm,” said Alexander Vicol, one of Mann’s masters students who helped clear the basin, wearing a parka while watching his professor swim.
“In the cold, I’d probably stay away, but I know some people who would definitely like to," Vicol said.
Toronto Public Health says it does not test water quality in the basin and therefore does not recommend swimming there.
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