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The sentry of the Ottawa River—a mammoth 1,271 kilometre watershed that nurtures some 250 communities along its shorelines and tributaries—is a petite 38-year-old with pretty blue eyes that look about three shades lighter than the colour of the water. Standing on the eastern edge of Victoria Island, between Parliament Hill and Hull, she points out three young boys on the Quebec side who are diving off a cliff that is partially branded with blue graffiti.
“I think it’s pretty fantastic that they are right downtown and they are swimming in the river,” says Meredith Brown, executive director of Ottawa Riverkeeper, a registered charity that has acted as the ecological voice for the river since 2003. “There are a lot of rivers that run through major cities where you wouldn’t want to swim at all.”
The river, which she describes as a “globally significant” waterway, is the central nervous system for a 140,000 square kilometre plot of land in the greater Ottawa-Gatineau region. It is the place where immense lake sturgeons have lurked in the depths for centuries, where Samuel de Champlain staked out his groundbreaking explorations and where the echoes of First Nations paddlers are still etched in its luminous waves.
Today it is a highly regulated river with more than 50 major dams and hydroelectric generating stations that have bloomed on its spine like tumours, the place an occasional corpse can be found drifting under a ring of gulls, and where nearly 1.7 million people live on its banks. It is also where you find a river that is ailing.
Brown, who is more commonly referred to as “the riverkeeper,” is the architect of a recent 81-page report that is regarded as the first comprehensive checkup the Ottawa River has ever received. While seeing the boys frolicking in the river brings a smile to her face, she is clearly worried that the next generation won’t be able to use the river.
“Hopefully that moment never comes,” she says. “But it could come if we are complacent about our regulations and what we allow into the river.”
The warning signs are everywhere, says Brown. Water toxins are creating deformed fish and hermaphroditic frogs. Government advisories tell citizens how many fish can be eaten from the river safely. Frequent closures of beaches at Britannia, Westboro and Petrie Island, where high levels of
E. coli can pose a serious health hazard to would-be swimmers.
The report, the bulk of which she wrote on maternity leave with her now six-month old son Charlie, is not encouraging. It warns of emerging threats from wastewater: such toxic metals as silver, chromium, mercury, arsenic, as well as pharmaceuticals. It candidly cites concerns over the discharge of radionuclides from the Chalk River nuclear facility, and the serious impact of the pulp and paper industry, which in 2002 released more than 163,000 billion litres of toxic effluent into the river. The report also identifies diminishing populations of plants (American ginseng and butternut, for example), fish (copper redhorse) and birds (Henslow’s sparrow, barn owl, Kirtland’s warbler and loggerhead shrike).
It’s Brown’s job as riverkeeper to speak on the river’s behalf. An environmental engineer by training, she is as comfortable in the boardrooms of hydro companies as she is giving lectures to concerned citizens.
Brown says she’s always pulled back from overcommitting to any one ideology. She is an engineer, but is suspicious of stringent formulas that don’t take into account the fluid and mutable behaviour of water. She is an environmentalist, but is weary of zealous placards that protest injustice but cannot adequately defend their position. She is a political activist, but is slow to point the finger of blame solely at industry.
“We want to be careful of pointing fingers until we have all the information,” says Brown. “At this point, nobody can really say what the worst polluter is, in terms of repercussions on the river. We want these people to take a stewardship approach.”
A riverkeeper has to get the facts straight, says Dan Brunton, a co-founder of Ottawa Riverkeeper. “Meredith captures this really well. They have got to be grounded in science, they have to understand what makes the river tick.”
Brunton says the report is the first time in Canada that a grassroots group has taken such a comprehensive and broad picture of a watershed as significant as the Ottawa.
“No conservation authority has ever done it. No provincial government has ever done it. The federal government sure as hell hasn’t done it. A bunch of citizens took it upon themselves and did this scientifically solid document.”
There are more than 150 waterkeepers worldwide, who are part of Waterkeeper Alliance, a grassroots organization founded by Robert F. Kennedy. Some are called “Lakekeepers,” “Coastkeepers,” or “Baykeepers.” Brown estimates she’s met about 100 of them at various conferences, and plans to meet more in a couple of weeks at a global Water Alliance meeting in San Francisco. Brown is one of only 10 waterkeepers across Canada.
She is already advising the City of Ottawa on a new stormwater management strategy. She also has the ear of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which invites her to the table to discuss her concerns about the Chalk River facility.
Environmental lawyer Mark Mattson, the waterkeeper for Lake Ontario, says Brown is one of the best in the country at what she does and that he has been continually impressed by her growing knowledge of Canada’s complex environmental legislation.
“Meredith is a real leader in Canada among all the waterkeeper groups,” says Mattson. “She has a real vision of what she wants to do, and she shows people how it’s done because she does it herself. I think that’s one of her greatest strengths.”
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The office of Ottawa Riverkeeper is crammed into the top level of Mountain Equipment Co-op, an outdoors store in Westboro that provides a small corner space rent-free to the organization. Brown, who is tightly nestled next to her assistant at the back of the store manager’s office, insists on holding the conversation outside. The thermometer is stretching toward the 30-degree mark, so she finds shade on a bench in front of the stately All Saints Anglican Church, where the elegant perfume from a patch of yellow day lilies accompanies her reflections on the river.
“The Ottawa River has been the lifeblood of this area for a long time, and it still is, even if people don’t recognize it,” she explains. “It still is the lifeblood for all the communities on its shores. We all get our drinking water from the river and we get power from the river. The health of the communities is tied to the river, but it takes a little bit of prodding to remind people of that sometimes.”
Brown grew up in North Bay, which is located at the western boundary of the
C-shaped Ottawa River watershed. When she came to Ottawa in 2003 for the waterkeeper position after a stint in Montreal, she described it as a “coming home,” a place of familiar landscapes where she could be connected by the river back to her childhood. Her genius loci—what the Romans referred to as the protective spirit of a place; that point in nature, whether it be the mountains or the seas, which reverberates in the depths of our souls—is undoubtedly fresh water. She was raised on Trout Lake, a cold and deep lake that has quenched the thirst of many in her home town for generations. There was a time, she recalls, when you could drink from the lake without having to treat it.
“When I grew up, there were a couple of islands across from us that nobody lived on. Now almost all the shoreline is developed. There are houses and cottages everywhere, pretty much. It’s becoming a lot more populated with a lot more permanent homes, so it has a bigger impact.”
Brown dabbled in biology at Queen’s University before taking some time off and later returning to the University of Guelph to attain her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Engineering. It was there she got involved in an important environmental study pertaining to a development project on a local river. Community members pressed for an ecologically viable alternative to the developer’s unpopular plan, and Brown was a key player in pressing stakeholders to build a constructed wetland to filter the storm water instead of pushing it into the river. Thus an environmental conscience was ignited.
“People are really floored when they find out I’m an engineer because I’m so atypical,” says Brown. “One of the reasons I really wanted to study it was because the only way to make changes is to know what they know and then to implement solutions. They tend to listen to engineers because they have the credentials to know what you are talking about.”
Brown moved to Vancouver in 1995 to embark upon a Masters of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University, where she was greatly influenced by Robert Newbury, one of the most pre-eminent experts on river restoration in the country.
After helping with a variety of environmental causes over the years, including stream restoration in British Columbia and some work with the David Suzuki Foundation during her time in Montreal, Brown felt she found her true vocation when the $48,500-a-year riverkeeper job opened up.
Since then Brown has built her reputation on dedication and knowledge.
“She is working with a group of volunteer enthusiasts but she is able to get the homework done,” says Alex Cullen, one of the more receptive city councillors toward the efforts of Ottawa Riverkeeper.
“You can only go so far with enthusiasm. You need an ability to work with people, get at the basic information, and have the ability to present it and understand what’s going on. These are the qualities she brings to the table.”
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Later in the week, Brown is at the Almonte Old Town Hall, where in a few minutes she will take the stage as the keynote speaker for the start of RiverEdge, an annual festival that celebrates the local arts scene in Mississippi Mills. A picturesque community on the banks of the Mississippi, it is one of the most populated and heavily dammed tributaries of the Ottawa River.
About 40 people have shown up, filling less than half of the chapel-shaped auditorium. As the crowd nibbles on a cheese spread and a couple bottles of Trapiche wine, Brown is greeted by Glenda Jones, a wide-eyed 64-year-old in a hot-pink dress who is chair of the RiverEdge committee. Jones begins to reflect on the river’s historical significance, and how there used to be 12 wool mills between Almonte and Carleton Place that supplied material for the British army. It’s not the same now. With the proliferation of cotton and polyester, the mills have “slowly gone with the wind.” Just around the corner, she continues, are an old flour mill and a former iron mill that is now a pub with a view.
“The river is what made Almonte what it was, and really, what it is, because we still sell the river as the main part of our tourism,” says Jones. “People here use the river a lot. They walk along it. They take their canoes on it. The river is really important to all of us.”
In attendance are members of the Mississippi Valley Field Naturalists, a local group eager to hear the riverkeeper.
Pauline Donaldson, the organization’s public relations spokeswoman, says the riverkeeper has inspired her group to think about the Mississippi River in relation to the entire watershed. Locals generally use wells for drinking water, she notes, but maybe it’s time for more people to think about their river neighbours downstream. “I remember reading in the paper about Meredith saying how there’s no one jurisdiction taking care of the river because there are so many municipalities involved. She thinks we should take a more holistic approach and I find that inspiring.”
It’s been a long day for Brown, who probably won’t get out of the meeting until late tonight before she drives along the Ottawa River and then the Gatineau River to her home in Wakefield. But if there is somewhere else she’d rather be, it doesn’t show.
“People working in that capacity are called,” says Dan Brunton of his colleague. “It really is a calling. You are not doing it for the big bucks. It’s a full-time job, a professional position, and there is a prestige to it in its own way, but it is hard. You have to be everywhere at all times and be everything to everyone with minimal staff, and go up against interests that are extraordinarily well funded and heavily resourced. You don’t do that for the hell of it.”
The lights in the auditorium dim and the riverkeeper’s address is about to begin. A single spotlight descends onto her tiny figure and Brown is ready to talk to the people about their river.
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The River Report
Ottawa Riverkeeper was created to protect and promote the ecological health of the Ottawa River system.
At the end of May, the organization released its first State of the River Report noting that while millions of Ottawans swim and fish in the river, sewage, industrial waste and water pollutants pour into the river daily.
Here are highlights of their findings:
No one is taking responsibility for the health of the river. Permits to dump waste are issued at municipal, provincial and federal levels and no one is doing the math to add up the cumulative impacts.
Fish contain unsafe levels of mercury and dioxins; pesticides and pharmaceuticals have been found in drinking water; and urban beaches are closed on days when pollution levels are considered unsafe for swimming.
Action must be taken now to preserve what we have—a globally significant river system. The report outlines changes that are occurring in the river with respect to shorelines and floodplains. Equally concerning are the levels of toxic substances found in the water and the fish.
More than a million are drinking the water from the river and swimming in the river, yet the public knows very little about what is being dumped into the river and the potential consequences of these actions.
Details of the report will be presented and discussed on Tuesday at the Ottawa Riverkeeper’s Annual General Meeting. Lakeside Gardens, Britannia Park, 7:30 p.m. The meeting is open to the public.
Ran with fact box “The River Report”, which has been appended to the story.