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Lake Massawippi Water Protection Annual Meeting by Michel Clairoux MD, FRCPC |
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| The annual meeting was held on
Saturday August 11 at 9h: 00 am at the College Notre-Dame
des Servites in Ayer's Cliff. The turnout was excellent: 300
people attended. There were 3 French TV networks, and many
journalists from local newspapers: La Tribune, Le Reflet du
Lac, The Record and the Stanstead Journal. Michel Clairoux,
the Association's President, presented an overview of what
was done by the LMWPA since the first alert (on September
21, 2006) of green-blue algae. Michel Clairoux spoke about
the meeting the association held on December 2, 2006 with
many experts on the subject and with more than 300 people in
attendance where a 10 point plan was presented to the 5
municipalities to help fight the recurrence of blue-green
algae. The LMWPA felt that many of these points could be
adopted rapidly by the municipalities. The association also
put out a publicity campaign on the prevention of blue-green
algae. It installed with the help of its students 200
posters around the lake and distributed flyers on the same
subject. The association also presented a memoir at the
Commission sur l'avenir de l'agriculture au Quebec
(available on
www.massawippi.org) The LMWPA presented the work done by
its students during the summer. These students met with more
then 400 people. Owners of lakeshore property were visited.
Four plantation workshops were held during the summer with
good attendance and more than 1200 mature shrubs were
planted and sold at half the price to lakeshore owners.
Mr Robert Lapalme, an expert on lake protection and restoration, gave a small lecture on the nature of the problem and outlined many ways on how we can concretely reduce the amount of phosphorus going into the lake. Ayer's Cliff mayor Vincent Gérin, representing the 5 municipalities, talked about many issues concerning the municipalities. Mayor Jacques Demers of Ste-Catherine of Hatley was also present as an attaché for Mrs France Bonsant, representative of Stanstead at the federal level. Mr Gérin announced that the dam will be fixed by 2008 autumn but was not more specific. He mentioned that he was looking forward to work in a collaborative manner with the LMWA. So that together, they can solve part of the blue-green algae problem, he announced that the municipalities are in the process of finalizing their by-law on shore protection, and they are going to legislate but, again, could not be more specific. Michel Clairoux announced LMWPA's three year plan in a 100,000$ budget. The association is going to increase its effort to educate and revegetate the shoreline and to promote the new by-laws. The LMWPA hopes that with its three years plan the municipalities will be incline to adopt new by-laws making it obligatory to revegetate the 10 meters zone from the shoreline. The rest of the meeting was devoted to the regular businesses of the association. Five new directors were elected. Some are very well known: Robert Gagnon, the former owner of the Hatley Inn and M. Foisy, owner of La Maison du Cinéma in Sherbrooke. |
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| Press Conference August 13, 2007 above | |