The water in Lake Chipican is an odd colour this year, and has been for nearly two months.
People have variously described the Canatara Park pond as a “fluorescent khaki” colour or “around-the-gills green,” depending on the light and the day.
The ineffable hue has people scratching their heads.
“Everybody’s talking about it,” said local naturalist Larry Cornelis. “All spring people have been asking, what the heck’s wrong with the colour of Lake Chipican?”
No fish kills have been reported and the water still sports geese and ducks.
“But birders generally agree there has been less use of the lake by waterfowl and shore birds,” Cornelis said. “We had way less migrating waterfowl make use of it.”
Parks and Recreation director Ian Smith said the city is aware of the strange colour and is looking into it. So far, public works staff have come up empty.
“It’s kind of scary,” he said. “It’s not that deep in a number of places but we can’t figure out what’s going on.”
Smith quickly ruled out an adjacent landfill as the cause.
Oil buried in the former industrial dump to the south is migrating underground, and the city has spent a small fortune preventing it from entering the pond.
Steel retaining walls and an elaborate collection and pumping system are effectively containing the mess, which would show up on the water surface as a sheen, he said.
“It’s not (the landfill). I can tell you that. It’s not leachate, it’s something else.”
Some have suggested oxygen depletion from thick ice and a long, hard winter, or a sudden growth of algae.
“I thought it was an algae bloom, but it just doesn’t seem to go away. I can’t tell you what it’s from and I’m not sure what it is,” said environmental educator Kim Gledhill.
Last year, water testing Gledhill did at Lake Chipican revealed nothing out of the ordinary for oxygen levels, acidity and turbidity. But the water was its old familiar brownish colour then, she said.
“I wish the city would do some water sampling. That’s what it would take to find out what the problem is.”
- George Mathewson