Report on La Peche Council Meeting - 2007.12.03

On December 3rd, 2007, the President, members of the Executive, about 20 or so members of the Association, and members of other lake associations attended La Peche Council meeting for the Public Consultation portion of the meeting. The President explained to Council the reason for our appearance, and stressed the seriousness of the current situation at Lake Bernard. We underlined the fact that, since there are other lakes in the same or similar situation (with blue-green algae blooms), we expected that Council would take the matter seriously.

We outlined what we felt were the steps that needed to be taken - a joint approach between the Association and Council, with the Association taking on the task of public education - getting out the message to all residents and owners of actions that should be taken to mitigate risk of further phosphate-loading in the lake, as well as other common sense measures to safeguard and improve water quality. The Council must, we emphasized, assume its role as the guardian of water quality, by taking septic system inspection seriously. We pointed out that Council has no current capacity for undertaking inspections, and no capacity to enforce existing Bylaws. We asked for a firm commitment about when inspections could begin in and around Lake Bernard, and pointed out that such inspections had to take place throughout the Municipality.

The Mayor responded by indicating that Council was aware of the seriousness of the situation, and pointed out that, as a result of Council working closely with the Lake Association at Gauvreau, their blue-green algae problem has been "solved". The Mayor admitted to the issue of lack of capacity and pointed out that Council was in the midst of their budget allocation discussions, and would take our request into consideration. He was incapable of providing any firm commitments, and said that his aim would be to begin inspections at Lake Bernard in the Spring.

Members who joined us followed up with further attempts to seek firm commitments, and our Councillor, Mme. Jacqueline Lambert-Madore, also pressed the Mayor and Council to come up with a written work plan with measurable milestones. She pointed out that she had asked for such a plan in the past, and that it had not been forthcoming. The meeting was a good beginning, and we made our points, and put the Council on notice that we wanted to partner with them in finding a solution to our current situation, but that we wanted to see Council's commitment confirmed by the provision of concrete time frames.

The Executive would like to follow up this public meeting with Council by seeking a meeting with the Mayor through our Councillor. Janet Bax will be contacting our Councillor to request a meeting with the Mayor BEFORE the end of the Budget allocation process. The reason for this is obvious of course, but we would also wish to provide the Mayor at such a meeting with our own work plan to show our good faith and the seriousness of our commitment.

If any of you have a particular desire to join the President and members of the Executive at such a meeting (which we believe will have to be before Christmas, and possibly in the next week or two), please let either Janet Bax (president@lacbernard.ca) or Laurence McLelland (environment@lacbernard.ca) know.

Thanks to all of you who made the effort to come to the meeting, and to those of you who have forwarded information that we will be sorting through and using for our action plan. If you would like to volunteer for the public education work we have to do, please let us know.

We plan to follow up with Low Council and have been in touch with an individual of that Council. More to come. Also, watch out for an article on the situation at Lake Bernard in the next edition of the Low Down.