Killarney Lakeshore Resident Owners Association

This name has been reserved for you, to provide identity and enable you to organize.

Election of First Directors - Vote by post office mail by Monday, April 9, 2018.

Or save a stamp, and show up before 5:00 pm at the Post Office and help with the count, as I shall not look at any ballot. Maybe host the counting party! I exit and it is yours.

To each lakeshore residence only, are delivered two cards as ballots, to be mailed in the envelopes. Two resident owners, spouse of owner, or proxy of owner, should cast the two ballots. This is a preference-ranked ballot, so print the names of whoever you would like to have as directors, with your first choice on the top line (vote for yourself if you are interested), your second choice on the second line, etc. Anybody who is resident of the municipality is eligible, yet anyone honoured by election is free to decline. All ballots will be used to select the voters' collective favorite for first director, and then all ballots used again to select the second, etc. Nine directors can be elected, to serve until November when the first annual directors' election occurs. Your first directors are important.

As residents of lakeshore homes, your children are at greatest risk of permanent harm from blue-green cyanobacteria neurotoxins in the lake water. As owners, the value of your property will increase greatly if the lake becomes safe again. Collectively, you are broadly educated and experienced, many have extra time to think, and many have extra resources. You have the most at stake, are stronger and more nimble than budget-constrained governments. Your vested interests align with the wider public's primary interest in the lake to firstly protect all children, so I therefore encourage you to organize to assert authority over your lake, to ensure the best decisions in service to all.

There are many imaginative initiatives you might wish to undertake, such as disciplined lake research, aeration optimization, security cameras, drone dispatch of life jacket to night drowning image, group purchase of non-polluting lawn care, invasive species prevention, finance of ventures to harvest lake biomass phosphorous, send boat taxis for tea parties, etc. One matter of great concern, is to assess whether the lake treatment planned by the municipal council, to continuously add oxygen to the lake at its deepest point, is wise or not wise.

Municipal Council's bottom oxidation plan, to increase fish, seems endorsed by sportsmen primarily interested in fish, with an apparent absence of grannies interested in toddlers. A populist momentum seems whipped up that I think the biology science thinkers might appreciate your group quelling down enough for thoughtful revision to again be possible. Council does deserve to be commended, however, in its establishing its Killarney Lake Action Committee to consider the lake's problems, and especially for the funding of professional research. I served on KLAC following their decision to research treatments for phosphorus, for about three years (until August 2017 when I critiqued their intention to risk disturbing the bottom sediment via directional drilling and high pressure air, and noted that the massive NW to SE rainstorm I saw over Pelican Lake in July 2016 had likely flushed floating algae out of it like a river). After the first year of the experiments to remove phosphorous, it had become obvious that the expensive product would be unreliable, and that the research objectives should rapidly evolve, that the scientist should access more funds for more robust experimentation equipment and to hire laboratory analyses for all nutrients and toxins, with more replicates, and to test more variables such as whether indeed phosphorus addition increases cyanobacteria, whether iron addition does (as Dr. Bill Paton's experiments had concluded), whether cattle manure addition is positive or negative, the effect of salinity sulfate salts from farmland, the effect of aeration bubbles directly under blue-green cyanobacteria blooms, etc. But we were all trapped in slow government processes, within limited pre-ordained budgets of triple institution agreements that obligated the researcher to complete the pre-imagined task even though it had become obsolete, reporting to a very busy local Council who have little relevant background and maybe 5 minutes meeting time to contemplate. I then concluded that forming your association, to nimbly fund and oversee KLAC's research, in your own vested interest like an agile private business could, would be preferred and more honourable for you than begging to governments who frankly have more critical issues.

Dr. Ackerman has found this European scientific article, which illustrates the complexity of the task: www.GrantRigby.ca/files/Visser_2016_Artificial_mixing_cyanobacterial.pdf [link at: GrantRigby.ca]

Your immediate critical decision is required, whether to endorse, or halt, Council's decision to add oxygen to the lake bottom. Their KLAC brochure states "The Plan: Through the addition of oxygen we can facilitate more decomposition of the suspended organic matter on the bottom, leading to... fewer nutrients available for algae blooms." Three M.Sc. and two B.Sc., working industry leaders, have looked at this statement and conclude the same as any gardener knows, that decomposition leads to more nutrients available, not fewer. In Pelican Lake that happened, the phosphorus levels rose after oxygenation of the bottom organic matter. The nutrients released will likely be of a low nitrogen: high phosphorus ratio. The iron-containing nitrogenase enzyme in blue-green cyanobacteria uniquely enables it to obtain its N from air, and thus it is competitively advantaged to use that new excess P to proliferate, especially if the increased fish population devours the good green algae to allow cyanobacteria access to more sunlight energy. Could bottom aeration thus increase cyanobacteria neurotoxins? Do you prefer more fish, or safer splash time for toddlers?

In Killarney Lake, the decomposition of the organic matter on the bottom will also release from sequester all the contaminants which are now safely contained in it. Toxins spilled in Killarney during the last 138 years can be assumed to have moved via storm sewers and springs into the lake and to now be in the bottom organic matter and sediment. High concentration spots are likely and unpredictable. Mercury, lead, copper, cadmium, asbestos fibers, etc will be released, to bio-accumulate first in bottom organisms, then into fish and top-of-food-chain fishermen. There seems no valid reason to add oxygen to deep waters to deliberately decompose contaminated modern and ancient bottom organic matter over many years. Adding contaminated straw would cheaply achieve the same result.

My best guess: Aeration might be positive if applied directly under stagnant blue-green cyanobacteria blooms near wind-protected shorelines. Maybe position the bubblers there? Suspend from floats and hold out in place by a pole with two ropes to shore, in front of your home each summer, via your own electric power, and then pull in for winter. Directly treat every blue-green bloom as soon as observed.

Isolate The Bay via curtain under the bridge, to aerate and bio-harvest to remove nutrients in 2019?

Most important, sample all beaches daily to warn parents and tourists of cyanobacteria toxins.

Anticipate possible future herbicides to efficiently target cyanobacteria's toxin-coding RNA-DNA.

2018-Mar-31 email: grantrigby@mymts.net To share, and salinity hypotheses: www.GrantRigby.ca