About the Stewards

ABOUT THE SCUGOG LAKE STEWARDS

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE LAKE STEWARDS

HISTORY OF THE LAKE STEWARDS

CURRENT BOARD OF DIRECTORS

WHAT WE DO NOW

ABOUT THE SCUGOG LAKE STEWARDS

ABOUT THE SCUGOG LAKE STEWARDS ABOUT THE SCUGOG LAKE STEWARDS

Scugog Lake Stewards Inc. is a charitable organization, incorporated in Ontario, run by volunteer Board of eight Directors and having many additional member Stewards within the Community. Their general mandate is to protect and enhance the health of Lake Scugog through the promotion of sound environmental management practices and community stewardship. A healthy Lake Scugog is pivotal to the economic health of Scugog Township.

We continue to work with many partner organizations:  Kawartha Conservation, Scugog Township, the Durham Land Stewardship Council, Durham Sustain Ability, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Baagwating Community Foundation, Freshwater Future and many more.

Directors on the Board of the Scugog Lake Stewards are elected at the Annual General Meeting held in late fall and serve for one year, although several current directors have been with the organization since the organization began in 1999. Financial information is available. 

Without volunteers this valuable organization would not exist or be able to carry out its valuable work for Lake Scugog.   Please consider becoming a volunteer, a member or donating to our work.

J. L. (Jamie) Ross
President
(905) 985-0555
c/o P. O. Box 97
Port Perry, Ontario L9L 1B5

 

TO BECOME A MEMBER OR MAKE A DONATION

 

 

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE LAKE STEWARDS

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE LAKE STEWARDSGOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE LAKE STEWARDS

MISSION STATEMENT:

“To grow a vibrant, community-based organization dedicated to sustaining and enjoying the health of Lake Scugog and its watershed through the promotion of natural shorelines and community stewardship”

OBJECTIVES:

1. To organize and/or participate in environmental projects designed to conserve and protect, for sustainable use, the flora and fauna of Lake Scugog and its watershed;

2. To educate and increase the public’s understanding of the environment and its importance;

3. To promote the development and ongoing implementation of an environmental management plan for Lake Scugog that identifies best practices with respect to new and existing land and water body utilization; and, conduct and/or encourage research relating to the environment

4. To understand the true nature of Lake Scugog and to disseminate the results of such research.

5.  To advocate for the lake in such a way as to achieve the best possible solutions for lake and watershed problems.

 

HISTORY OF THE LAKE STEWARDS

HISTORY OF THE LAKE STEWARDSHISTORY OF THE LAKE STEWARDSHISTORY OF THE LAKE STEWARDSHISTORY OF THE LAKE STEWARDSHISTORY OF THE LAKE STEWARDSHISTORY OF THE LAKE STEWARDSHISTORY OF THE LAKE STEWARDS

HISTORY OF THE SCUGOG LAKE STEWARDS 

Early history

Starting in 1996, the founding member of our organization the Rev. Sandy Beaton began with the involvement of Kawartha Fisheries Association, to find funding for a major, pivotal  condition and habitat survey of the shoreline  of Lake Scugog and its tributaries.  This survey, conducted in 1997, studied and documented 132 kilometres of Lake Scugog shoreline and the 2,217 properties that existed at that time.  

It found the disturbing news that 1,807 of those shoreline properties provided little or no habitat for lake life or provided any cleansing of the lake water by shoreline aquatic plants. These shorelines were characterized by lawn right to the water edge or a hardened water edge in concrete, stone or wood. 

Clearly this was an expanding condition for the lake edge that needed to be reversed in order to protect the rich diversity of life in the lake and increase the potential of natural shorelines to help clean the lake of excess nutrients, silt and runoff pollutants.

The real beginnings 

In 1999, Sandy drew together a group of volunteers interested in improving the health of the Lake.  This group, Ken Oldfield, Barbara Karthein, Jamie Ross, Bill Lishman and Sandy Beaton formed a group called the Scugog Shores Millennium Committee.   The mandate of this group was to "help maintain or improve the health of Lake Scugog through the promotion of natural shorelines and community stewardship."

Their first goal was to help shoreline owners understand the need to provide buffers of natural plant material along all or part of their shorelines and how to use the ever thickening root growth of shrubs and trees as the best erosion protection.  They raised over $400,000 to begin to develop and maintain two small park and trail areas on municipal land, south of Palmer Park. See our photo gallery  for photos of Joe Fowler Park and Baagwating Parks.  The intent was to complete a park and trail system from Palmer Park to Highway 7a and upgrade the concrete wall shoreline to a more environment friendly lakeside.

Lake Scugog has soft shorelines and very heavy ice action in winter and strong wind forces in summer.  The Committee wanted to test out all types of methods that would actually work in the short and long term to counteract those forces.  (See erosion control under Homeowner information for the methodologies that were approved by the Trent-Severn Waterway and which definitely worked in our very exposed areas of shoreline.)

In 2003, the original Scugog Shores Millennium Committee became an incorporated charitable corporation under the name Scugog Lake Stewards Inc. We are now able to issue our own tax receipts for donations but must report all financial information yearly to keep our status.

Joe Fowler Park was opened on May 21 2002 with school children from S.A. Cawker and R. H. Cornish planting hundreds of colourful native flowers along the pathways that even in the first year made a tremendous show.  Every plant, shrub and tree was a carefully chosen native species meant for planting in the conditions that we were offering.  There were five different shoreline erosion control methods used.  Interpretive signage helped homeowners understand what was happening on the site.

What was to become Baagwating Park began in 2004.  This small piece of municipal land contained a major stormwater ditch which allowed untreated runoff to run directly into a very vulnerable section of the lake.  Testing revealed that water contained high levels of bacteria but also a chemical soup of metals, gas, oil, salt, silt and much more.  The Stewards wanted to help remedy this water before it entered the lake but the small area of land prevented all but treatment by two small, but deep, sediment trap ponds connected by a vegetated channel that would both slow the water and help clean it as well.  It is estimated that the completed design removes 60% or more of the contaminants before they enter the lake.   We are very proud of this park and celebrated its opening with the Mississaugas of Scugog Island with a large open party. 

Design work was then to begin on phases 3 and 4 when the municipality stepped in and indicated that they wanted to wait until a full waterfront plan was completed.   This unfortunately meant that we had to turn back $150,000 to funders that had been allocated to future plans.  In 2007, Municipal Parks and Recreation took over the existing parks.  The Stewards no longer have any say in how those parks are maintained or whether they appropriately demonstrate good shoreline naturalization methodologies. 

To the Present 

Following the cancellation of our hopes for a continued project for the Port Perry shoreline, other aspects of the work that the Scugog Lake Stewards had been doing became paramount such as research, education and advocacy.

 

CURRENT BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Board of Directors for 2009 - 2010

Next annual meeting, November, 2010

WHAT WE DO NOW

WHAT WE DO NOW

RESEARCH work for the Lake Stewards has seen us conduct actual scientific tests to look at bacteria levels both in stormwater runoff when it enters the lake and in the lake in general.  It has seen us test the pollutant levels of stormwater runoff as it enters the lake, looking at heavy metals, gas and oil, nutrients, pesticides, salt and silt.  

But research also means intensive research about the Port Perry lagoons, about private septic systems, about stormwater, about native aquatic and terrestrial native plants, about shoreline naturalization and the importance of woodlots and trees, and much, much more. 

EDUCATION has always played a large role in the work of the stewards.   We work with children going into the schools to teach about the lake and about the importance of natural shorelines and erosion protection.  We plant shorelines with young children organized by either the Stewards or Kawartha Conservation.

For adults we have held many workshops, spoken at gatherings, and written for magazines.  We have held two very large conferences:  One for landscape and construction professionals to convey information about appropriate lakeshore work, and one for the public which was a New Septic System Technology Marketplace to encourage the upgrade of septic systems for the greater health of the lake and the watershed. (As a result of this work, the Stewards produced a large binder of all the information you will need to make a good decision on how to maintain, improve or replace your current septic system.  Ask for it at the Scugog Memorial Library.)

We have a regular quarterly feature in FOCUS on Scugog magazine called "Life on the Lake" which outlines all sorts of information about the Lake and how to enjoy it in a way that is healthy for the lake.  We work closely with Kawartha Conservation to help them get their message out.

ADVOCACY cannot help but be a large portion of our work.  By advocacy we do no mean political activism or strident assertions.  We start with in-depth scientific research and many, many questions.  The result is then used by the Stewards to ask the questions that we feel need to be answered by whatever level of government controls the issue.  

In the past our advocacy has meant our speaking out on environmental, lake centered topics as:

FUTURE