Why won’t the government of New Brunswick complete the Watershed Classification process? The New Brunswick process is almost identical with the classification system used in Maine. The system used in Maine would allow NB to effectively co-manage the shared trans-boundary watersheds in the St. Croix and the St. John river basins.
The Maine system uses rock-filled cages of living stream insects that allows river and lake managers to effectively measure and prevent contaminants from harming Maine’s rivers and streams. The aquatic insects become virtual “canaries in the streams” for rivers such as the St. Croix and the St. John.
The Minister of the Environment and Local Government’s recent statements to the media that the existing classification law, passed in New Brunswick in 2002, is vague and unenforceable, is in sharp contrast with Maine Department of the Environment Officials who have indicated that Maine’s classification law and process has been enforced effectively in Maine for many years. Our law is a carbon copy of the Maine process. The Minister’s statements that our law is unenforceable are questionable at best.
In the 1990s, NBDELG worked with its international neighbor to build an exciting and effective river basin system like Maine’s in NB. Following the passage of the Classification Regulation in NB under the Clean Water Act in 2002, NBDELG began building local citizen teams in a program known as Outreach and Partnering which was funded using the Environmental Trust Fund. In all, 19 citizen-driven initiatives were established. The groups completed watershed evaluations, and built action plans to provide the Minister of NBDELG with proposals for classification of the streams and rivers that the basin groups had adopted.
If the government had completed the planned classification of New Brunswick`s rivers, NBDELG and the working groups would have continued to monitor the rivers and to work on Best Management Practices with the non-complying uses. Over time, excellent water quality would have been protected and substandard water quality would have been brought in line with the established A, B and C river classifications.
I retired from NBDELG in 2002, but liaised as an unpaid citizen contact between NBDELG and the International Joint Commission’s, International St. Croix River Watershed Board on the St. Croix and St. John rivers. During my stay on the Board, I continued to meet with NBDELG representatives.
The Board was most anxious to see the New Brunswick Water Classification regulatory process adopted on the New Brunswick side of the Saint Croix to match the Maine program already in place. Although the Saint Croix Waterway Commission had formed a working group, and had successfully completed and submitted a classification proposal to the Minister of NBDELG, the river classification process was suddenly put on hold around 2005. When I completed my work with the Board in 2012, the river and stream portion of the St. Croix was still not classified. Although I had numerous meetings with different individuals in NBDELG over the years, I was never able to inform the board what the holdup was at NBDELG, and why the Department stubbornly refused to classify the river and streams in the St. Croix River watershed. Although amendments were passed on the Clean Water Act by the NB Legislature in 2008 to clear legal objections with regard to the regulatory powers in the Act, the classification of the St. Croix River was still not passed by the Minister.
And here we are in 2016, some 14 years after the passage of the Classification Regulation, and we are told that the present government is working on a redundant water strategy for New Brunswick which clearly does not include the Water Classification process, or regulation. It has cost the people of the province over 25 years of extensive effort of many government officials and many citizens to reach the point where we are today.
All of the ponds, lakes and impoundments in the St. Croix were classified as Class AL (A Lakes) when the regulation was passed in 2002. Not one river or stream has been classified since the passage of the Classification Regulation. To date, it is very possible that over $10 million of government staff time, and Trust Fund monies, not to mention all of the extensive work by river basin volunteers for no compensation which has taken place. Nowhere in the proposed strategy is it clear that there is a process to cope with runoff sources of pollution from forestry, agriculture and construction activities in a practical and cost effective manner.
It is almost certain that the government will of necessity spend millions more to reinvent new watershed monitoring schemes, and will likely repeal the existing classification protections on the lakes, ponds and impoundments now in place under law across the province, and especially in the St. Croix and St. John River watersheds. We need to ask “why”?
William Ayer of Fredericton, New Brunswick, earned his master’s degree in zoology with a specialty in fisheries science from the University of Maine. He began his civil service career in the New Brunswick Department of the Environment and Fisheries in 1973 as manager of environmental quality, retiring from government service in 2002 as the director of sustainable planning.
