After a decade of complaints that his cattle have been polluting a scenic jewel of the Gatineau Hills, the National Capital Commission is seeking a court order to terminate the Meech Creek lease of the son of a former NCC chairman.
The commission has notified Gib Drury, son of former commission chairman and federal Liberal politician Bud Drury, that it will seek a court order to end his lease because he has ignored a Nov. 7 deadline to build fences that would keep his cattle out of the creek and its tributaries.
Mr. Drury leases 127 hectares from the NCC, about 20 per cent of the Meech Creek Valley. Huguette Poulin, who has opposed raising cattle in the valley for 20 years, said she counted almost 600 cattle near the creek during the summer.
NCC spokeswoman Lucie Caron said yesterday the NCC and Mr. Drury could have been fined for polluting the creek that flows into the Gatineau River south of Wakefield.
The agency is seeking damages for lost revenue because the lease on the property wasn’t to end until August 2007.
Ms. Caron said the cattle are expected to be removed from the valley by the end of November.
“The farmer built some fences, but even after repeated warnings, he was not complying with environmental regulations and the terms of his lease,” Ms. Caron said.
“Our understanding is that the cattle are still getting into the creek.”
Quebec government inspectors reported cattle in creek tributaries this year after water tests by volunteers from the environmental group H2O Chelsea showed high fecal coliform counts and cloudy water in the creek between Meech Lake and the Gatineau River.
Environment Canada notified the NCC and Mr. Drury in June that they were violating the federal Fisheries Act by allowing cattle to pollute Meech Creek.
Raymond Vezeau, director of inspections for Environment Canada in Quebec, said tests during the summer of 2004 showed that more than 50 per cent of rainbow trout fingerlings died after four days in a tank filled with water from the creek.
Under the Fisheries Act, the NCC and the farmer could have faced fines of up to $300,000 for a first offence.
Chelsea spokesman Charles Cardinal said the municipality had asked the NCC for at least 10 years to clean up the creek.
“People did swim in the creek and it flowed into the Gatineau River,” Mr. Cardinal said. “Mr. Drury was supposed to take measures to keep his cattle out of the creek, but he didn’t do so.
“This is a creek that crosses most of Chelsea, so if it is polluted at one end, the whole length of it will be polluted. It made it unsafe for kids to play in the water or to swim. It is a matter of respecting the environment, and he was not doing that.”
Patrick Henry, a spokesman for H2O Chelsea, said water samples taken by community volunteers upstream and downstream from Mr. Drury’s farm helped convince the NCC it should terminate the lease. The Quebec Environment Ministry notified the NCC in May that the commission was violating a provincial law that bans cattle in or near bodies of water.
Mr. Henry said he expects the NCC to allow someone to grow hay, but not raise cattle in Meech Creek Valley if the Quebec court ends Mr. Drury’s lease.
University of Ottawa biologist Antoine Morin said the creek became increasingly polluted, from the cattle pasture near a covered bridge on Cross Loop Road, to where the creek empties into the Gatineau River, 2.5 kilometres south of Wakefield.
According to Mr. Morin, the creek contains about five times the level of fecal coliform considered safe for swimming.
The valley was cleared and settled by farmers during the 1800s and has been used to raise cattle since at least the 1960s. The Quebec government expropriated the valley from 47 owners during the mid-1970s to create a wildlife park, jointly funded with the NCC. Most houses and farm buildings were demolished, but the proposed $54-million project never materialized.
This month, the NCC has called tenders for a private environmental consultant to prepare an “ecosystem conservation plan” for Gatineau Park. Commission spokeswoman Lucie Caron said the NCC will spend about $150,000 on a conservation plan that will show how best to preserve the park’s significant natural features.
Ms. Caron said the NCC must choose an outside consultant before the end of December, because it does not have enough experts to produce a conservation plan for the entire park within three years.
The NCC adopted a plan for Gatineau Park in May that will make it into a “conservation park.”
A consultant’s study shows the number of visits has increased from one million a year in 1980, to 1.7 million today. Unless something is done to limit park use, visits could increase to two million annually by 2020.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2005