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First Lake, Lower Sackville

August 22, 2007   

Caution: Since First is a shallow lake, the standard limnetic (i.e., open-water) trophic parameters may not represent the true trophic status of the lake

The Shubenacadie song (i.e., the Stonemason's song), and the history of the Stonemason's song; and

Lifelike murals at the heavily travelled MicMac Parclo in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada

Acknowledgements

Contents:

• Water quality, and general overview!
• An overview of our concerns

• Hypolimnetic lake aeration prescribed!
• Demonstration project for stewardship practices

• Concerns of stakeholders and Government agencies

Water Quality

Select scientific modelling and chemical/biological limnology are part of our miscellaneous archives!

The bathymetric map; the morphological data; the location map; the Shubencadie River headwaters flow chart; the paleolimnology of lakes in the HRM; HRM's receiving water baseline sampling program for fecal coliforms; Closures of the Kinsmen's beach as recent as August, 2005; and August, 2004!

Percent change in urban land use and indicators of stress:

Overview of our concerns

Our secondary concern has been with sporadic high fecal counts in parts of the lake and no single location has been indicative of the overall fecal pollution from multiple sources.

There has been no scientific evidence of any reduction and/or return to its natural background values based on our predictive TP modelling.

Even of more importance as a comparison are the trophic guidelines of the CCME and the indicator thresholds for anthropogenic stressors of freshwater lakes in Nova Scotia!

This is one of the lakes in HRM which has been studied extensively by various researchers inclusive of us limnologists as well as by paid consultants. The vast majority of the scientific and other general consultant studies are easily available to the public through a combination of the Dalhousie University library system, the HRM, and other sources.

While our latest scientific biostats are not yet available in the public domain, nevertheless, the vast majority of our scientific investigations inclusive of our phycology are indeed available through the local university libraries.

We herewith take liberty in pointing out that the approximate one hundred and twenty thousand dollar ($120,000) Federal-Provincial SEDA demonstration project at First Lake did not document any appreciable reduction in phosphorus export. This project headed by the Municipality of the County of Halifax was inadequate since it did not include the entire subwatershed of First lake; it was only a demonstration project which incorporated experimental stewardship practices of around 1-ha with another similar site as a control. This project was the successor to another approx. $45,000 project for an initial assessment carried out for the County.

• The resulting reports were over and above other independant scientific studies conducted by BIO-DFO, some graduate researchers at Dalhousie University, and several investigations by ourselves.

Hypolimnetic lake aeration prescribed

There have been several successful case histories of lake aeration worldwide as well as in Canada.

Concerns of stakeholders and Government agencies

• Lakefront residents oppose further development of walking paths around First Lake  
  
• Concerns of John Sheppard PEng of the Halifax County and solutions offered by a landscape company
• Eventual concerns expressed by Councillor, Bob Harvey, of Dt# 20 which includes First Lake
• An interesting 1972 article
• An aerial photo of heavily silted First Lake (1970s)

Acknowledgements

The jpeg scan of the fish was extracted by biologist, Peter Shacklock, from the Tv show we had produced featuring underwater video of the fish species of the Shubenacadie Lake system during year-1994.

We salute the Chebucto Community Net (CCN) of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada for hosting our web site, and we applaud its volunteers for their devotion in making `CCN' the best community net in the world!