Our Great Lakes

THE CANADA-ONTARIO AGREEMENT RESPECTING THE GREAT LAKES BASIN ECOSYSTEM

2002–2003 BIENNIAL PROGRESS REPORT

Annex 3 - Lakewide Management

Introduction

This annex focuses on the efforts Canada and Ontario are making to manage the individual lakes in the Great Lakes Basin and to reduce their ecological and human use impairments. The annex contains three goals, seven projected results and 61 commitments. This section of the report outlines the progress made on the projects and programs that were designed to meet the goals and results.

The goal of Canada and the United States is to “restore the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the Great Lakes ecosystem.” To reach it, the five Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair must be managed individually. Although they are connected, they differ physically, biologically, chemically and geographically. The uses of the land surrounding each lake also differ.

Not surprisingly, these differences are reflected in the stresses to the ecosystems of the individual lakes. These stresses include harmful pollutants, the loss of habitat for fish and wildlife, the loadings of nutrients such as phosphorus, and the presence of invasive species including zebra mussels. To reduce these stresses, agencies of Canadian federal and provincial governments and those of American federal and state governments have developed binational action plans known as Lakewide Management Plans or LaMPs. Many of these activities included in the LaMPs were delivered through a variety of inter-agency and community-based partnerships. That is one of the hallmarks of the Canadian partners in COA, their agencies and stakeholders. Their work together is characterized by building consensus, collaborative decision-making and joint implementation of actions in the LaMPs.

To this end, the partners, agencies and stakeholders regularly share information in workshops, seminars and training sessions about their activities, their successes, and their challenges as well as about current knowledge and practices. The partners recognize that ongoing dialogue is required to successfully carry out the activities listed in this annex.

In addition, the COA partners have established task forces to identify and coordinate federal and provincial initiatives for protected areas and for invasive species. These task forces report regularly to the Annex Implementation Committee on the activities that are underway. When required, the task forces also steer the work needed to meet the commitments in the COA to establish a viable network of protected areas and to reduce the entry and spread of invasive species.

This annex lists the goals, results and some of the activities undertaken in 2002–2003, as well as two articles about notable achievements under this COA. The first article is called Building Partnerships that Really Work and the second is called How-to Guide Helps Shoreline Protection Efforts.

Planning to succeed In the past, plans to restore the environment focused on reducing, if not eliminating, specific problems in an area, such as curbing emissions from a factory or improving the performance of a sewage treatment plant. Today, the focus is broader, extending beyond the borders of individual lakes to the boundaries of the Great Lakes Basin, and in some cases to other parts of North America and the world. Understanding emerging environmental problems, such as the effect of invasive species on a lake or how much airborne pollution adds to the loadings of pollutants, requires a holistic or integrated lakewide management approach. This approach includes examining how the land in the watersheds and the tributaries is used, as it affects the water quality and the biodiversity in the Great Lakes Basin. Some of the issues in the LaMPs extend beyond the boundaries of the Great Lakes Basin and must be dealt with at national and international levels. Air pollution is one example. Planning at this level is complex and requires attentive management, a high degree of cooperation and coordination, and dedicated resources – financial and otherwise. In the first two years of this COA, the partners, their agencies and stakeholders planned and created the structures required to provide the cooperative partnerships and the many tools needed to meet the lakewide goals, projected results and 61 commitments of this five-year agreement.

Progress Report 2002–2003

Annex 3 looks at the collaborative management and decision-making processes in both Canada and the United States that address lake-specific ecological impairments. This annex contains three goals and seven projected results.

The Goals and Progress Made

Goal 1 Clearly understanding the environmental problems and causes of ecological impairment.

Completed biennial LaMP reports by Canada and the United States in 2002 for lakes Superior, Erie and Ontario, with the second biennial reports on schedule to be completed in 2004. These describe the state of each lake, the causes of ecological impairment, and the actions required to restore environmental quality. The first biennial document for Lake Huron was on schedule to be completed in 2004. A Canadian management plan report for Lake St. Clair is currently being produced by provincial and federal agencies.

Goal 2 Reaching consensus on and having broad-based support for direction and priority actions for environmental restoration, protection and conservation.

• Established a binational partnership to address priority issues on Lake Huron in 2002, and continued discussions to establish a binational program for Lake St. Clair.

• Prepared multi-year binational and domestic work plans identifying required actions for lakes Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario and achieved consensus on priority actions required.

• Implemented a binational, multi-agency monitoring strategy in Lake Ontario, which is being considered as a model for the other lakes.

Goal 3 Making progress on habitat restoration, conservation and protection, and reducing the impact of harmful pollutants with a lake-by-lake focus.

• Made progress toward habitat restoration, conservation and protection for lakes Superior, Erie, Ontario, and Huron.

• Developed and implemented various fisheries, watershed, habitat and species at risk recovery plans, largely through local, cooperative actions

. • Established the Nutrient Management Act in June 2002. This provided for the phasing in of mandatory regulatory requirements beginning in September of 2003 for new and expanding livestock facilities and allowing for future phasing in of existing large livestock farms.

Progress on Achieving the Projected Results

Result 1 Reductions in the release of harmful pollutants on a lake-by-lake basis.

• Completed activities supporting non-point source PCB trackdown, biomonitoring, and watershed investigations in Lake Ontario, Lake Erie and Lake Huron.

• Completed analysis and reporting on pesticides in sediments from Lake Huron and in the water of its major tributaries.

• Negotiated the Lake Huron Binational Partnership between federal, state, and provincial agencies.

• Through the Environmental Farm Plan incentive program and the Healthy Futures program supported adoption of environmentally sound farm practices. These included the cleanup of unwanted pesticides, creation of water quality initiatives, and creation of farm buffer strips.

• Implemented two new provincial regulations – one to address dental amalgam (mercury) and another to phase out hospital incinerators (mercury and dioxins/furans).

Result 2 Rehabilitated, conserved and protected fish and wildlife habitats and protected areas.

• The Ecological Gifts Program helped to protect almost 1,400 hectares of habitat.

• Partners to the Great Lakes Wetlands Conservation Action Plan launched Phase Two of their strategy, which includes monitoring, protecting, and restoring wetlands.

• A multi-agency study continued assessing impacts of the Lake Ontario/St. Lawrence River water level regulation on shoreline habitats.

• Developed and implemented watershed plans to support the habitat rehabilitation of major tributaries.

• Continued development and implementation of recovery actions for species at risk (e.g., peregrine falcon, eastern spiny softshell turtle), and continued work on the Thames River Recovery Plan.

• Species at risk recovery strategies are underway in the Sydenham, Ausable, and Grand rivers and within the Essex Region watershed.

• Initiated identification and mapping of habitats and ecosystems for rare aquatic species and communities across the Great Lakes Basin.

• Continued rehabilitation of native fish species – such as Atlantic salmon and lake trout in Lake Ontario and coaster brook trout and walleye in Lake Superior.

Result 3 Reduced entry and spread of non-native invasive species.

• Ballast water management regulations have been drafted. Current ballast water guidelines were expected to be replaced by ballast water management regulations in late 2004.

• Helped reduce the spread of invasive species by developing and distributing public awareness and education materials.

• Initiated the development of an invasive species monitoring program to track their introduction and spread.

• Initiated an ongoing biological control program for purple loosestrife in affected wetland and nearshore areas.

• Placed restrictions on the buying and selling of live invasive species, including two species of goby, four species of invasive carp and 28 species of snakehead.

Result 4 Reduced human health risk from contaminants in the Great Lakes.

• Initiated the multi-agency binational Great Lakes Human Health Network. The network is a voluntary partnership of governments and their agencies to exchange information pertaining to health matters by working through the existing RAP and LaMP processes. Health information and advice is communicated to stakeholders through their member organizations. The network also supports the coordination of public health and environmental management systems.

• Worked on the establishment of the Canada-Ontario Public Health Network. The network facilitates communication on human and environmental health issues among government agencies involved in public health in the Great Lakes Basin and complements the binational Great Lakes Human Health Network.

Result 5 Collaboration between government, organization and Basin residents.

• Held a binational workshop on coordination of monitoring programs, with participation from agencies and organizations across the Great Lakes.
• Continued to provide collaborative direction through binational multi-agency LaMP management committees and working groups.

• Provided ongoing Basin stakeholder input through public forums for Lake Superior and Lake Erie.

• Continued to report on populations of birds and amphibians, using volunteers, through the binational Marsh Monitoring Program.

• Continued participation in the Great Lakes Coastal Wetland Monitoring Consortium Project to integrate provincial, state, and federal wetland monitoring programs

. • Continued working with landowners across southern Ontario to rehabilitate fish and wildlife habitat.

• Continued joint projects with Lake Superior agencies and public forums, including mercury awareness/outreach, a newspaper insert and a stewardship program.

• Supported farmers, food, and rural businesses and organizations, through the Rural Water Quality initiative of Healthy Futures for Ontario Agriculture, to implement best management practices and agri-food technologies to safeguard water quality and quantity. Approximately $25 million was invested to support rural water quality programs. Initiatives included cleaning up obsolete and unwanted pesticides, improving storage methods for paper mill waste for poultry operations, and supporting rural water quality programs within the Great Lakes Basin. A program to support the proper decommissioning of abandoned wells was also completed.

Result 6 Improved scientific understanding of the fate and effects of harmful pollutants and the causes of ecological impairments for each lake.

• Completed a research study on organic content residuals in agricultural ecosystems.

• Initiated studies on the impact of forestry practices and pesticides on aquatic ecosystems.

• Completed the final report in a series on the potential effects of endocrine disruptors in wildlife from the use of selected urban and agricultural pesticides.

• Continued collecting fish samples and analyzing data to support the Ontario Sport Fish Consumption Advisory Program across the lakes.

• Conducted research on wildlife health effects associated with contaminant exposure.

• Undertook research to improve the knowledge of the impacts of invasive species and changing ecosystems on foodweb interactions.

Result 7 Coordinated and integrated monitoring for scientific interpretative reporting, decision- making and reporting on progress.

• Completed shoreline water quality assessments in Lake Erie and Lake Huron, as well as fish community monitoring in all five Great Lakes.

• Undertook fish contaminant monitoring studies in support of the Great Lakes Surveillance Program, an ongoing program to collect information on Great Lakes water quality.

• Developed a binational fish assessment program to ensure compatible lakewide data quantifying Lake Superior’s fish community.

• Continued to develop methods to characterize and identify rare species habitats basin-wide.

• Supported activities related to environmental assessments and groundwater monitoring at federal ports and harbours.

• Monitored and assessed trends in contaminant levels in herring gull eggs in all the Great Lakes. Completed a database of results for 1998–2001.

• Published the book Where Land Meets Water: Understanding Wetlands of the Great Lakes, a summary of wetland science and conservation actions.

• Initiated regionally based integrated monitoring on Lake Ontario to assess coastal wetland conditions.

Lake Ontario Binational Cooperative Monitoring: Building partnerships that really work

For years, Canadian and U.S. research ships passed each other like strangers in the night, collecting data and gathering samples on the Great Lakes. There was a lot of important work being done by Canadian and U.S. federal, provincial, and state agencies, but much of it was conducted in isolation. Today, thanks to the Lake Ontario Binational Cooperative Monitoring initiative, the research scientists are not only talking to each other, they are sharing data and working together to answer some complicated and difficult environmental questions:

• How are exotic invaders, like the zebra and quagga mussels, upsetting the foodweb lakewide?

• Are exotic invaders threatening our efforts to restore naturally reproducing populations of native fish?

• How significant are the loadings of critical air pollutants, including pesticides, mercury and PCBs, to the health of the lake?

• How do the airborne pollutants compare to other sources of contamination, such as industrial and municipal effluents or urban and rural runoff?

• How well does the data coming out of Canadian and U.S. labs compare?

• Will different sampling and testing techniques produce compatible results?

Partnership the key to success

“Partnership is the key to success,” says Environment Canada’s Melanie Neilson. “Cooperative monitoring will improve our understanding of the Lake Ontario ecosystem, help fill some key information gaps, and improve communication among researchers working on both sides of the border.

“The Lake Ontario Atmospheric Deposition Study (LOADS) will give us a better understanding of how airborne pollutants are affecting the lake. The Lake Ontario Lower Aquatic Foodweb Assessment (LOLA) will tell us more about how invasive species are disrupting both the bottom dwelling and the nearshore phytoplankton communities. And the Interagency Laboratory Comparison Study will show us how well we can combine the analytical results produced by different research teams.”

To see the big picture, you first have to piece together a complex scientific puzzle from millions of individual bits of data.

“This kind of coordination and data synthesis takes time and effort, and the project partners are committed to making this happen,” says Vi Richardson from Environment Canada. “We have the support of Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. We are also working with academics and institutions on both sides of the border.”

Identifying priorities

The priorities were identified and coordinated through the Lake Ontario LaMP, which broadened its base of partners to help support and strengthen the ongoing investigative efforts. For example, the Lake Ontario LaMP’s partnership with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission has brought together water quality and fishery managers. The 2003 sampling year is the first step in developing a long-term binational strategy for Lake Ontario that meets the needs of water quality and fishery managers.

“There has been serious concern that important food chain species were in decline,” explains Scott Millard, a scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. “The cooperative monitoring program will give us a one-year snapshot on the general health of bottom-dwelling organisms and those that support the food chain,” he says.

All the raw data is being fed into a central database – a very complicated program to manage – that shows how these new and invasive species are changing and upsetting the foodweb that serves as fish food for the species at the top of the chain.

It takes time

A big project like this doesn’t come together overnight. “We first started talking about this monitoring program five years ago,” says the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Fred Luckey. It took time to get all the parties coordinated, to get the funding in place, and to set up the data-sharing protocols and all the other technical details needed to make this work.

Often the hardest part of this kind of work is bringing the researchers and their findings together and then communicating the big picture to all the stakeholders – the various levels of government and their agencies, the private sector and the non-government organizations – as well as the general public.

Instead of issuing the scientific findings piecemeal in dozens of separate papers and reports, “we will evaluate all the data collected and issue a comprehensive report that incorporates and integrates all the findings to create a more complete picture of the lake,” says Environment Canada’s Neilson.

“This is not a one-year, one-shot wonder,” says Management Committee member Simon Llewellyn. Instead, the Lake Ontario Cooperative Monitoring initiative is a cornerstone model for conducting future monitoring throughout the Great Lakes. Next year, attention will shift to Lake Erie, and then year after year, to the other lakes in rotation. “We’ll be back to Lake Ontario in four years to continue the work, looking for trends and changes. The partnerships being formed today will produce results for years to come.”

Toronto Harbour – Tony Walton for the Ontario Ministry of the Environment