Accessibility and Access Keys [0]
Larry Pegg wants the small south-end Ottawa lake where he taught his two daughters to swim returned to its natural state because it’s toxic.
In fact, the water in the lake is so bad the City of Ottawa has issued a warning to stay out.
Pegg and his wife built on their Greely property almost 25 years ago when the 45-acre lake — the Ministry of the Environment refers to the large body of water as a pond — was in “pristine” condition.
It was home to thousands of frogs and filled with fish. Paddlers and swimmers used it to cool off from the summer heat. But as the years went by the water also began to fill with weeds. The growth didn’t bother the Pegg family, but by the mid 1990s million-dollar homes began to spring up in Lakeland Estates and homeowners wanted the weeds gone.
For six seasons beginning in 1996, the Ministry of the Environment issued permits allowing chemicals to be used to rid the water and a smaller nearby lake of weeds.
After a six-year hiatus, chemicals were applied again last year, and Pegg says he wants the MOE to halt any future applications because it’s slowly killing the lake.
“Lakes are not swimming pools you pour chemicals in,” said Pegg, from his backyard.
He calls it the “trophy house mentality” where owners with expensive properties want beautifully manicured and landscaped shorelines without any weeds, but he says its having the opposite affect.
“It’s actually bringing the property value down,” he said.
In a June 2008 letter from MOE supervisor Penny Stewart, the ministry reviewed the application to perform pesticide application and allowed the procedure to go ahead. It didn’t approve a similar application this year, but did allow the treatment of a smaller 18-acre lake nearby.
After last year’s treatment, Pegg says blooms of blue green algae began to appear and fish began to die.
In May, after testing the water, Ottawa’s department of public health sent a letter to homeowners warning them and their pets to stay out of the lake.
Pegg says he and his neighbour Chris Leblanc have been labelled as troublemakers because of the objections they have raised, but the pair say they are only fighting for the future of the body of water.
“All we are trying to do is get out what is going on,” said Leblanc.