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Ottawa’s first Riverkeeper is a 34-year-old environmentalist with a talent for sailing, snowboarding and kayaking, sterling academic credentials and a name scripted for the job. Ottawa River’s independent watchdog beat out 115 applicants from around the world.
Ottawa’s first Riverkeeper is a 34-year-old environmentalist with a talent for sailing, snowboarding and kayaking, sterling academic credentials and a name scripted for the job. Lara Van Loon, a bilingual New Brunswick native, was chosen from 115 applicants—from as far away as China and Ireland—and officially began work yesterday.
“Everyone who saw the newspaper ad said the job description was written for me. I have the weirdest résumé there ever was,” said Van Loon.
As Riverkeeper, she has a daunting task. Her job is to become an expert on the ecological status of the river, mobilize disparate groups with a stake in the Ottawa and form a network of “river watchers” to serve as an early detection system.
Van Loon earned a master’s degree in environmental studies from York University in 2000, has two undergraduate degrees and has experience doing research and restoration work on New Brunswick’s major rivers.
“The focus of my master’s was working with groups that ran the gamut from environmental groups to forest industry reps, that’s why this job fits so well.”
A one-time Laser boat racer and national-level snowboarder, Van Loon is athletic enough to haul boats up on shore, but also has the science background the selection committee was seeking.
“Being on the water is going to be a huge priority for me.”
As the Ottawa Riverkeeper, she will have no special enforcement powers, but will act as an independent watchdog for the overall health of the river, all 1,271 kilometres, from its headwaters in Quebec to Montreal.
The river is a tangle of jurisdictions: a couple of departments of the federal government, ministries from two provincial governments, the National Capital Commission, two hydro utilities, plus dozens of municipalities.
The office of the Ottawa Riverkeeper hopes to be both a repository for information about the waterway and the centre of a network of community, recreational and environmental groups with a stake in the river.
They hope to open an office soon and possibly a hotline. The long-term plan, depending on funding, is to have satellite offices and additional paid staff.
One of the major jobs for the first year is to assemble a status report on the health of the river.
Van Loon spent the early part of her life in New Brunswick, but has spent extended periods in Ottawa and Eastern Ontario during the last five years and has lived here with her husband James since the summer.
“To be honest, this is a dream come true. I’ve worked on river projects all through my university life. That’s where my passion is.”
She has studied salmon movements on the East Coast, worked for a Coast Guard rescue and patrol unit in Shediac and assembled community groups to do restoration work along a single watershed.
Ottawa Riverkeeper Inc. has been working toward hiring its first paid staff member for 18 months, advertising for the position last fall.
President Dan Brunton said the response was overwhelming. He personally received more than 400 e-mails about the posting, which pays between $40,000 and $45,000 a year.
The concept began in the United States as a grassroots movement. In the 1960s, commercial fishermen along the industrialized Hudson River were fed up with the state of the waterway.
They banded together in an effort to enforce pollution laws. In 1983, their efforts blossomed into the first Riverkeeper program. There are now 90 such programs in North America, including four in Canada.
Officially, the Ottawa Riverkeeper is tied to the Waterkeeper Alliance, which is well-known south of the border for its connection to Robert Kennedy Jr. The hope is that he will to travel to Ottawa this spring for an official start to the program.
The Riverkeeper group has a 12-member board. It was finally able to hire a full-time staffer because of a two-year grant of $115,000 from the Ontario Trillium Foundation. An agency of the Ministry of Culture, it annually gets about $100 million of funding generated by Ontario’s charity casinos.
More fundraising will be undertaken, however, as Ottawa Riverkeeper Inc. thinks its annual budget in the third year might hit $200,000.
Brunton says there is much to be learned about the Ottawa. “We don’t even know some of the questions we should be asking. It’s going to be a voyage of discovery, that’s for sure.”