One person鈥檚 thoughtless act can undo the work of many dedicated people. It was such negligence that wrecked this year鈥檚 Gorge Swim Fest. The festival is a celebration of the miracle of community effort that turned the Gorge Waterway from an open sewer to some of the cleanest water in the region. This year鈥檚 edition was scheduled for July 30, and everything was set until someone dumped a load of septic-tank sewage into a storm drain.
Organizers noticed a foul smell the night before the event, saw scum on a creek that emptied into the waterway and cancelled the event before it started. They rushed to contact swimmers and volunteers to let them know about the decision.
It was a blow, as the group expected as many as 1,000 participants.
At first, no one knew what kind of contaminant was involved, but a few days later, lab tests confirmed fecal coliform, E. coli and some type of disinfectant. It all pointed to a septic disposal truck or a large recreational vehicle whose tank was emptied into a stormwater drain that fed into Gorge Creek.
Municipal staff traced the contamination to the area of Craigflower Road, and were working to find the point of entry.
It鈥檚 hard to believe that someone in the septic-waste business would risk dumping sewage into a storm drain, so perhaps it was a recreational-vehicle owner who didn鈥檛 know or didn鈥檛 care that storm drains don鈥檛 connect to the sewage system.
That the careless act occurred the night before the swim festival was a painful irony.
For decades, industrial waste, sewage and garbage were dumped into the Gorge, until volunteers mobilized in the 1990s to clean it up. Many of those who were used to staying upwind of the waterway thought it would never work, but it did.
It took years of campaigning and hard work, with the vision of making the water as clean as it was in a bygone age, when as many as six swim clubs used it for competitive swimming.
The Gorge Swim Fest celebrates the success of that long labour, but what happened this year shows how watchful we must be to safeguard the water.
The Veins of Life Watershed Society, founded by John Roe as part of the cleanup campaign, is well-named. As the recent contamination shows, water flows like blood through veins, connecting and invigorating.
But like our veins, water courses are vulnerable, and can carry bad as well as good.
Out of sight is not out of mind, when it comes to water. Dumping sewage down a drain doesn鈥檛 make it disappear or send it to some harmless 鈥渙ther place.鈥�
That discarded waste fouls and contaminates water and shoreline that had been clean a few minutes before.
We don鈥檛 know if the dumper knows the damage he or she did, or has travelled on, oblivious to the effects of their actions. For those of us who do know, however, it provides a lesson in the fragility and interconnectedness of the veins of our life.
It took years of work and dedication to clean up the Gorge. It takes care and vigilance to keep it that way.
