Publications
One Mile Creek Landowner Stewardship Guide – NOW COMPLETE
With the generous help of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority, the Landowner Stewardship Guides were completed and hand delivered to landowners, who were home, within a 30 meter buffer zone of the One Mile Creek. Additional mail-outs were sent to landowners within the watershed of One Mile Creek, as well as more hand deliveries by FOMC volunteers. The Stewardship Guide is also available online on NPCA’s website: http://www.npca.ca/forms/documents/NPCA-Stewardship-Booklet-Final.pdf
One Mile Creek Watershed Plan – NOW COMPLETE
Conducted by Aquafor Beech Ltd. & LURA Consulting Ltd. for the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority.
Available now at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library or online at the NPCA website.
One Mile Creek Watershed Study – Public Meeting and Workshop
Display boards lined one wall of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Community Centre on the evening of March 9th, 2005 for the second public meeting concerning the One Mile Creek Watershed Study that is being conducted for the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority (NPCA). The boards illustrated the existing environmental conditions along the Creek. They included maps showing the boundary of the watershed, the areas susceptible to flooding, and treed properties; and the three zones into which the watershed can be divided: headwaters (Peller Estates to King Street), central portion (King to Butler), and lower reaches (Butler to Lake Ontario). There were also representations of measures that can be used to solve or manage the problems that now occur in the watershed.
The first open house, held in October 2004, identified a number of issues such as base water flow, flooding, water quality, and poor aquatic habitat, not all of which affect the three zones equally; and the state of Landsdowne Pond. The second workshop presented a list of measures that could be used to address these issues. The measures were explained and discussed in a presentation by David Maunder, the representative of the consulting firm, Aquafor Beech, that is doing the study. Implementation of management solutions may be a challenge: for much of its length the Creek runs through private property, and landowners may be unwilling to apply them. Also, many of the measures that would apply to public lands may be costly.
After the presentation, the participants in the workshop were given a workbook in which they were asked to evaluate the importance of the management measures that can be applied to public lands; and to identify what may be the barriers to implementation on private lands.
Measures that can be applied to improve and control water flow include wetlands and dry ponds, to serve as reservoirs for storm water and sources during drought; culvert improvements; and methods to control the flow of runoff into the creek. Runoff control is currently also one of the topics under discussion in the Town’s study on Urban Street Design. Fish habitat enhancement and erosion control will both require fairly extensive landscaping of the creek bed and banks. Landsdowne Pond presents a major problem and considerable work will have to be done to maintain it as a pond rather than a wetland. Water quality improvement can be brought about only by corrections to both storm and sanitary sewers.
Solutions that can be applied on private lands will require cooperation from landowners. Several measures may be readily used. Stormwater control and slowing of normal runoff can be achieved in part by combining disconnection of roof downspouts with rain barrels and other methods to slow the movement of rainwater to One Mile Creek . Fish habitat enhancement can be helped by removing hard and manicured banks and replacing them with creekside plantings to create a more natural environment.
Finally, participants were asked to indicate the importance of criteria put forward for evaluation of the Watershed Plan when it is finally completed.