WC132 SeptOct 2023 - Magazine - Page 29
H2OPINION
Creek Sends Message
to its Great Lake
Exploring our complicated relationship
with stormwater
BY STEVE BRAUN
PEDESTRIAN HERE WALKS a fine line between
a river harbour and a Great Lake. That’s the sediment-laden outpouring of Sixteen Mile Creek and the
nearshore mixing, sorting and transport machine that
is trusty old Lake Ontario.
It’s actually a pretty wide concrete wall, so not too fine a
line, I guess. Not too much new here either, this type of mixing
has been going on for centuries and maybe millennia at this
spot. Although I’m sure the brown stuff is a little more potent
now and certainly arrives in more of a rage. Tantrum maybe. At
least large ships aren’t unloading coal anymore up where those
boats are. Good old days, but not for the water.
The brown versus blue demarcation is an attention-holder.
A person can go out here to think about water and its connection to all things. To be thankful that the lake will turn that
brown to blue in short order. Proper thankfulness for our water
was recently shared with a large group that I was a part of–at
a touching ceremony held at the Canadian Water Resources
Association national conference in Halifax. If you were there,
you will know. Beautiful water lullaby and all.
Not long after the conference, I realized that thankfulness
for stormwater was something that had never occurred to me.
Good employment aside, I just hadn’t thought of stormwater
as a type of water to be thankful for. It isn’t like that superstar
that is drinking water, with it keeping people alive and all. Very
impressive. It’s not given the place of prominence that sanitary
wastewater has, with its flashy predictions of societal health,
and the generating of energy from waste methane. And those
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T
Stephen Braun
Stephen Braun is a principal
water resources engineer
with Matrix Solutions, and
co-owner of CB Shield.
Getty Images
Stephen Braun
A
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