The Don River may not be as filthy as it was a generation ago, but it's still highly polluted.Toronto's tormented watercourse was just confirmed as the most polluted river in Ontario by an Environment Canada survey.
And yet on hearing the news this week, Dalton Shipway, who has fought on the Don's behalf for two decades, said he's optimistic about its future.
A founder of the Task Force to Bring Back the Don in 1989, Shipway said campaigners for the river have won the hearts and minds of Torontonians, who now want a greener watershed and think the Don is important.
What's more, he said, "we're starting to see this kind of concern translated into actual projects," such as tree plantings along the Don and the Chester Springs Marsh Shipway helped install below the Bloor Street Viaduct.
The city and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority are working on a plan to replace the artificial Keating Channel that Shipway calls "an abomination" with a natural river mouth for the Don at Lake Ontario.
Next year, the city will launch environmental studies on two major projects to intercept sewage before it flows from aging sewers into the river during storms.
With barriers to fish removed, salmon are swimming up the Don as far north as Markham.
People who held a mock funeral for the Don 20 years ago would have been surprised at such progress, said James McArthur, executive director of Friends of the Don East.
"I'm fairly positive we're going in the right direction but not quickly enough," he said.
Like Shipway and others, McArthur said he's not surprised the highly urbanized Don scored a rating of "poor," 34.8 out of 100 on the federal Canadian Environmental Sustainability Index.
The Humber, by contrast, got a "marginal" 60.2 and the Credit River a "good" 90.5.
One Environment Canada official this week said the study, based on data contributed by the province, shows the Don's outstanding pollutants are phosphorus, nitrates and chloride. The first two are found in fertilizer and wastewater and natural material such as leaves in a stream; the third is road salt, said Jean-Francois Bibeault, a manager of water quality indicators and development.
"It's kind of an early warning of things that should be looked at in more detail."
A volunteer group called the Taylor Massey Project hailed the survey as a great tool that will allow people to easily compare the health of watercourses.
But founding chairperson Andrew McCammon said 80 per cent of pollutants may be coming from Taylor Massey Creek, which has Hwy. 401 in Scarborough as its headwaters and is channelled or entombed in concrete for much of its length.
The single monitoring spot reporting data for the survey is downstream of where the creek joins the river, he noted. "If that's the case, Taylor Massey Creek would be the dirtiest watercourse not just in Ontario but in all of Canada," McCammon said, adding the group asked for separate monitoring in the river's West Don, East Don and Taylor Massey tributaries.
"Once the ratings are known, there just might be increased demand for more action," he contined.
Ward 31 (Beaches-East York) Councillor Janet Davis said sewer overflows are the Don's main sources of pollution. The city is therefore launching an environmental assessment on putting two tunnels and a containment tank on Taylor Massey to handle combined-sewer overflows there, she said.
It will also start a study of the Don Trunk Interceptor Project, a $500-million pipe to twin sewer capacity along the lower Don that, combined with the Taylor Massey improvements, should mean significant improvement, Davis said.
The city will continue an outflow monitoring program that found pollution sources along Taylor Massey Creek and has managed to shut many of the worst ones off.
But though these projects will be funded by water rate increases "it is totally unacceptable" that federal and provincial governments won't contribute to replacing the city's aging sewers, said Davis. "We simply don't have the money to do it any faster."
While the Don's poor condition is disappointing, Ward 30 (Toronto-Danforth) Councillor Paula Fletcher asked residents to imagine what the river would be like without people "taking up the cudgels" for its rehabilitation 20 or 25 years ago.
"Are we going fast enough? No."
Though "the task is an enormous one," McArthur said the city can bring back the Don by shading the river and taking it out of concrete channels. Residents can help by disconnecting downspouts, using less salt and replacing asphalt driveways with permeable surfaces. But, "we can make a big difference in the right direction," he said.
Shipway said rather than adding more pipes, people need to work with natural systems to help the river recover, keeping "the rain out of the drain in the first place," so it will flow more steadily to the lake.
The Don watershed, he argued, must be the priority other plans have to fit around. "We've got to give room for the river to operate like a river."