Clean-up Fund

A step in the right direction

Picton Bay has been a hotbed for discussion over the past few years for its constant clash between nature and industry. The bay hosts both a busy terminal and a cement factory as well as being a favourite place for recreational boating and fishing. Most of the time everyone lives in harmony. But the bay has seen its share of mishaps over the past few decades and anyone who considers themselves from the County will tell you that there have always been issues with keeping the bay clean. Stories of boats floating over huge piles of visible salt left in the waters of PB decades ago would have been met by extreme displeasure from local interest groups in 2018, but back then there were no such groups. Companies in the ‘70s and ‘80s ran rampant, not just in Picton Bay, but all over the world with a disregard for the environment. The damage done to the planet’s ecosystem in those decades were not done with malice, per se, but with a sickening combination of ignorance and confidence by a consumer-led public. If the television didn’t say it, it hadn’t happened.

Nowadays, thanks to the Internet, people can arm themselves with knowledge on environmental issues, and rally with allies online to stand up for causes that are personal to them. For the group Save Picton Bay, the main focus since 2015 has the been the monitoring and holding to task of Picton Terminals (PT) for its treatment of the bay and its surrounding habitat. Recently, the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans Canada declared the salt run-off from PT into the bay to be toxic to fish and other amphibians, and PT was also recently mandated to receive no further salt deliveries in 2019 unless the salt is in a covered structure.

PT has come back with some announcements of its own recently. One being that the excavation for the site of the enclosed salt structure is well underway at PT and owner Ben Doornekamp is certain that the storage structure will be ready for next season.

Arguably, the most important announcement came on December 19, when PT announced that it has created the Picton Bay Clean-up Fund, dedicated to cleaning up the waters of Picton Bay. The fund will be made available to local community groups once Save Picton Bay has reconciled the accounting following the legal discussion of municipal zoning by-law details for the deep-water port owned by Picton Terminals. To kickstart the fund and encourage others to donate, PT and the Doornekamp family have donated $40,000 to get the ball rolling. PT will be accepting applications for funding Picton Bay clean-up projects starting in spring of 2019 via their website pictonterminals.ca.

For Doornekamp, it’s about doing right for the environment.

“If there is an individual or group that wants to make an effort to clean up the bay and they have the time, but may not necessarily have the financial resources, then just give us a call and we’ll hear your proposal,” says Doornekamp.

Doornekamp says that idea came from one of many family brainstorming sessions, but it had to wait for the right time to be announced.

“In this day and age you have to be very careful how you communicate anything and everything, because everybody has a voice through their keyboard now. We, as a family, have been thinking for a while on what to do and we are very excited to bring this to fruition,” says Doornekamp.

The terminal is also about to expand its staff as well, with three new hires coming from the community. With all of these positive moves, Doornekamp also hopes this will build alliances with groups they once were at odds with.

“It’s been a long time coming in how we wanted to communicate the situation with Save Picton Bay. We think it’s a wonderful situation we have with SPB. They help us be more perfect, more accountable and hopefully we can help them do a bit of the same. It’s all about working together for the betterment of the watercourse that we all live around,” says Doornekamp.