Essex residents concerned about water quality are encouraged to join a community discussion in the town.
Mayor Sherry Bondy and councillor Jason Matyi will co-host an open community discussion on water quality within the town on Saturday morning.
The session will focus on local and regional water quality concerns, including nutrient runoff, drainage management, concerns over shoreline health and beach water quality, and Great Lakes protection.
Residents, researchers, farmers, and local organizations are invited to attend and share how they've been affected, and hear from local representatives from agricultural, environmental, and government organizations on what can be done to make improvements.
Essex councillor Jason Matyi says it will be an opportunity to hear concerns and brainstorm ideas.
"Residents and policy makers get together, share some ideas and talk. And we have some great speakers coming out to give us some education and science behind some of the decisions, and some of the possibilities that we can implement in the future."
Residents were expressing concerns over the water quality at Colchester Beach. According to the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit's website, the beach saw five weeks of warnings, and two weeks of closures throughout the summer months.
Matyi says this was out of the ordinary.
"Our beach has been shut down a couple times this year, which is not normal for our beach. Normally the Colchester Beach is open, but we had much more warning days than the last couple years, and this year we had more closed days... that was kind of showing an alarming trend. So, that starting raising our awareness to it and we decided to have this discussion to see where we could go from here."
He says residents can even bring water samples from their yard to be testing during the event.
"We want to hear whatever problems our residents are experiencing, or seeing. If they have some solutions, definitely bring those to the table. And then we're going to have some organizations like RAEON [Real-time Aquatic Ecosystem Observation Network] that are going to come out with the water rangers that we can actually set up our residents to take some water samples if they have creeks or streams flowing through their yard or their property."
Matyi says he's hoping that a report will be brought back to council if there are problems that can be solved with new implementation measures.
The event is open to the public and will be held Saturday, October 25 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Colchester Community Centre.
A number of organizations will be at the event including the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association (OSCIA), the Pelee Coastal Resilience Committee, the Essex Region Conservation Authority (ERCA), and researchers from the Harrow Research and Development Centre and the University of Windsor's Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research (GLIER).