Lacombe Lake monster
St. Albert has officially slain the invasive goldfish in Lacombe Lake Park, and netted a nine-kilogram monster in the process.City crews treated Lacombe Lake with the pesticide Rotenone twice last month to kill off its population of goldfish, which are a prohibited noxious species in Alberta. Goldfish are not native to Alberta and can grow huge in the wild, threatening native fish.
Crews applied the same pesticide to Edgewater Pond and Ted Hole Park last year, resulting in some 45,000 dead fish.
While some of those fish were 10 inches long, the monstrosities pulled out of Lacombe Park Lake make them seem like guppies in comparison.
“The largest one we caught was about 76 centimetres and nine kilograms,” city environmental manager Christian Benson said of one koi recovered from the lake – it’s possibly the biggest invasive koi caught in Alberta yet.
“These things do get quite large.”
Crews recovered about 120 kg of goldfish and koi total, which was less than they expected, Benson said. He suspected that the 16 or so leviathan-sized koi in the lake might have been outcompeting the other fish (including the lake’s trout, of which they found none), keeping populations down. The goldfish that crews did recover from the lake were “dinner plates” in size, with some reaching 12 inches in length. Crews hoped to stuff and mount some of the recovered fish to serve as an educational tool.
Benson said that the lake appears to now be goldfish-free, as crews did not find any dead ones following the second rotenone application on Sept. 19. The city was still home to many other many other invasive species, though, such as the Himalayan balsam and flowering rush.
Benson urged residents not to release pet fish into water bodies.
“It’s not good for your ecosystem,” he said, and you could be fined if caught.
Visit bit.ly/2MsS2AF for details on the goldfish program.
Slow walk for bag ban?
St. Albert’s environmental advisers were split last week on whether or not to slow-walk a proposed plastic bag ban.The city’s Environmental Advisory Committee heard a presentation last Thursday on how St. Albert could implement a ban on single-use plastic bags. City council had called for a report on such a ban earlier this year.
Plastic bags commonly end up in the city’s blue bags even though they aren’t accepted by the blue-bag program, said city waste diversion program supervisor Olivia Kwok. Residents have also become much more concerned about single-use plastics this year in the form of straws, bags, and utensils, and communities like Vancouver and Edmonton now either have or are considering plans to discourage their use.
Kwok recommended a go-slow approach to a bag ban that would start with six to eight months of consultation.
“This is something that would affect many, many residents,” she said, and the city needed to thoroughly discuss the implications of a ban.
Kwok said the city would have to consider enforcement, a regional bag ban, and possible exemptions – Victoria only bans checkout bags, for example. Council would then reconsider a bag ban once consultations were complete.
Committee chairperson Tanya Doran called for a more aggressive timeline, saying that the city should do as it did with its recent water bylaw and implement the ban and have a long education period before it actually kicked in. To do otherwise would simply embolden ban opponents.
Mayor Cathy Heron said she was concerned a ban could push people to buy heavier plastic bags, and wanted to see a life-cycle analysis of plastic bags versus cloth ones. This was a timely idea, though, and it could give residents a way to address the city’s problems with plastic recycling.
Council would review this issue in November, Heron said.
