The Bay and The Beach
It sounds odd but I was worried about taking my recent vacation. It was my son’s first trip on a plane and our first longish trip with him as well. I had heard horror stories and so I was ready for the worst. But it turns out that travelling with my one-year-old is a lot easier than travelling with my high maintenance girlfriends. No long and frequent washroom breaks (he’s not toilet trained yet), no obsession about how he looks in a bathing suit (he would rather be nude) and no hangovers to nurse (obviously).
While we enjoyed much fun in the sun on the beach we also managed to enjoy a few inland adventures, including a visit to St. Pete’s popular pier and aquarium. I was fascinated to learn more about the Gulf of Mexico in general and Tampa Bay in particular. It's interesting to compare Florida's superior waterfront management strategies with ours.
Turns out that Tampa Bay is Florida's largest open-water estuary. It’s 400 square miles, with a watershed more than five times that large. Much like Lake Ontario, Tampa Bay faces risks from stormwater runoff from urban and residential areas (fertilizer and pesticide residues, as well as trash) as well as air pollution, primarily from power plants and automobiles. Toxic substances such as metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and polychlorinated biphenyls are of particular concern in the estuarine environment.
After learning a thing or two about the Tampa Bay Estuary Program (TBEP), I think there are a few lessons here for the wards of the Toronto waterfront. We need to take a good long look at the transparent and efficient way in which other restoration efforts are carried out. By comparison, our plan to clean up and restore our waterfront is taking forever, and the bill is growing.
The TBEP is an intergovernmental partnership coordinating the overall restoration of the bay, and is overseen by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Southwest Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
As one reporter recently wrote in the Tampa Tribune, “It's not often that a federal agency's anniversary merits comment.” But, reportedly, from the time the TBEP was established 15 years ago, it has consistently demonstrated how a government venture should work.
The article points out that the restoration effort could easily have become another hidden bureaucracy with “little to show for its efforts but paperwork and expenses”. On the contrary, the TBEP seems to make the most out of its resources. It employs a lean seven people and has an annual budget of slightly less than $1-million, and the agency works with local authorities to assess bay problems and develop practical and affordable solutions. Officials aren’t known to dramatize an issue for effect or extra funding.
At the same time that there’s been a steady rate of development and redevelopment, Tampa Bay boasts these impressive restoration results so far: water clarity as good as it was in the 1950s; about 2,350 acres of marshes, mangroves and other key habitats restored from 1996 to 2003; sea grasses increasing at the rate of 250 to 300 acres in recent years, primarily because of the improved water quality; and, islands that support increasingly large and diverse nesting colonies of wading and shore birds (about 40,000 pairs of 25 different species).
Meanwhile, the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp. (TWRC) is in the midst of a convoluted competition involving five international design teams trying to figure out how to deal with its many problems. The TWRC, in partnership with the Government of Canada, Province of Ontario and the City of Toronto, is currently sponsoring the six-week competition to revitalize Toronto’s 3.5 kilometre central waterfront, one of the most heavily used parts of the shoreline and the one closest to the downtown business district. The winner of the multi-million-dollar project will be announced on May 31.
It's good to be back as always. And now I’m off to enjoy a walk to the Toronto beach. There are no seashells, but there are no sharks either!
For further information on the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, visit: http://www.tbep.org/
For further information on the progress of this program, read this recent article from the Tampa Tribune: http://www.tbo.com/news/opinion/editorials/MGB6CYN75NE.html
For further information on Toronto’s Waterfront Revitalization program, visit: http://www.towaterfront.ca/dbdocs/4464efc2ce6e2.pdf
