Water garden will keep Marathon Beach open: Johnston

A water garden planned by Community Waterfront Friends will eliminate the E coli bacteria which has caused Marathon Beach to be closed in the past, CWF chairman Rod Johnston told North Bay’s Engineering and Works committee Monday night.

The CWF concept calls for a breakwall to be built beside the beach on the Government Dock side, with three ponds within the breakwall.

No reason to close
Each pond would have different types of Northern plants in them to act as water filters.

“Right now whenever there’s heavy rainfall, there are bacteria and Marathon Beach is closed after a heavy rainfall,” Johnston said.

“If we put this in place there will be no reason to close Marathon Beach, the water will be clean and there will not be any E coli there.”

Spotlessly clean
Johnston said the first pond would be a settling pond.

“The second pond has plants like water irises which have enzymes which kill bacteria, and the third pond has got lily pads and water hyacinths, which have very much a filtered root, and that filtered root cleans out pretty much any other particle which is there,” Johnston said.

“So when the water is secreted from that third pond it’s absolutely spotlessly clean and it’s done all naturally.”

Area for walleye
CWF estimates the project would cost around $500,000 to complete, and the group plans to raise the money itself. Other community groups have also indicated they want to get involved, Johnston said.

“The Kinsmen have verbally said they’d like to be involved in raising the money to purchase the materials for the boardwalk, which we’d like to do with lumber made out of recycled plastic,” Johnston said.

As well the Lake Nipissing Stewardship council and Nipissing Partners in Conservation have told CWF they like to get involved raising money to build the breakwall, which would also provide an area for walleye to spawn in the spring.

“The other thing we’re hoping for is that we can talk to various contractors who are doing rock work in the North Bay area to drop the rock in that area and that will give us the materials we need for the breakwalls,” Johnston said.

“So it’s very much a volunteer type of a situation. The individuals who own the water lots have told us they’re prepared to donate them to the city, so all the parts are coming together and seem to be in place and it’s looking like a very doable affordable project.”

Kenroc not part of plan
The CWF plan would also lead to Marathon Beach being made a little longer and extending it to where the original lake shore water line was.

An environmental study report about Marathon Beach was done in 1994 and also suggested a similar type of water garden.

The neighbouring Kenroc site won’t be part of the CWF plan because of the expense involved in assessing how contaminated it is and what to do with contaminated soil once it’s found.

“We expect there’s some fairly serious contamination on the Kenroc site, so from our point of view again, just throwing some numbers around, we think it’s a million-dollar clean-up at least, where what we want to do with the water garden is in the order of $500,000, so it’s quite a different set of numbers,” Johnston said.

Problem will be solved
The Engineering and Works Committee voted to exclude Kenroc from the mix.

“We’re thrilled,” Johnston said, “because we simply couldn’t afford to include the Kenroc site in this at this time.”

If there is leakage into the lake from the Kenroc site, Johnston said, the water garden will be capable of cleaning it up.

“And the more important thing is that the Tenth Street outflow during heavy rain periods releases a lot of bacteria into the beach area and that problem will be solved by this water garden,” Johnston said.

He said “optimistically” the project could be started next spring.