Lakeshore Capacity Program

Planet Haliburton

On this episode of Planet Haliburton we take a look at the challenges, possibilities and limitations of protecting Cottage Country lake water quality and shoreline health via municipal by-laws and other planning tools with Dr. Neil Hutchinson, of Hutchinson Environmental Sciences Ltd. in Bracebridge.

Development pressure on Haliburton and other cottages country shorelines has been increasing in recent years and the Covid-19 pandemic and related restrictions on vacation travel has turned that trend into a virtual feeding frenzy.

All this is happening coincident with rising concerns over lake water quality, declining levels of natural shoreline vegetation and climate change with its associated increase in air and water temperatures, blue -green algal blooms, extreme weather events, insect and disease infestations and biodiversity loss.

These tensions have increased the pressure on local municipalities to assume a large and more aggressive regulatory presence on the shoreline at the same time as decades of austerity-driven budgets and downloading of responsibility from senior levels of government have severely stretched their capacity to do so. The Lakeshore Capacity Assessment (LCA) model is a planning tool developed by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment (MOE) to predict the impacts of shoreline development on water quality of inland lakes on the Canadian Shield Dr. Neil Hutchinson, the owner of Hutchinson Environmental Sciences Ltd, an environmental consultancy firm in Bracebridge, worked on the Lakeshore Capacity project policy development for the Ontario Ministry of the Environment from 1988 – 1998 and since that time for various municipalities as a consultant.

Copy this link into your browser for a resource list for this program. https://canoefm.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/PH-Resource-List-for-March-11-2021.pdf

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