It’s mid-way through summer 2009 and beach season on Lake Ontario is in full-swing. Lake Ontario Waterkeeper is tracking beach postings on 100 beaches in our watershed, from Niagara to Kingston and north on the Trent River system.

The best beaches on Lake Ontario are the ones that are never contaminated with e. Coli. So far this summer, thirty-five beaches have been open every single day. Every region except Toronto has at least one beach with a perfect record this summer. (Note that in Peel Region, there are sometimes discrepancies between beach postings and e. coli results, so Waterkeeper can’t verify the accuracy of the beach records there.)

The five most frequently posted beaches on Lake Ontario so far this summer are:

1. Rotary (Kingston) and Bayfront (Hamilton): 45 days
2. Jones (St. Catharines): 41 days
3. Lion’s Park (Campbellford): 37 days
4. Tweed Park – Stoco Lake (Hastings & Prince Edward County): 29 days

Coronation Park East and West in Halton and Municipal Beach in St. Catharines just missed the top (or bottom!) five; they were posted 28, 26, 28 days respectively.

Testing at some Toronto-area beaches had been suspended during the strike, but sampling resumed at all eleven of the city’s beaches just before the long weekend.

You can locate beaches in the Lake Ontario watershed using our Google Maps tool. You can track beach posting rates on our June and July updates. Don’t forget to vote in our online poll: When was the last time you swam in Lake Ontario?

This week on Living at the Barriacades

The sewage systems for communities on the Great Lakes are actually designed to dump 15 billion litres of sewage into local waterways every year. To get a better sense of what sewage pollution is being reported, Living at the Barricades called Elaine McDonald. Elaine is the senior scientist at Ecojustice, formerly known as Sierra Legal Defence Fund. The organization just released a report on sewage pollution on the Great Lakes, entitled “Flushing out the truth“.

Music on this week’s show:

Ooh Poo Pah Doo – Taj Mahal
Piece of Crap – Neil Young
Can’t say crap on the radio – Stiff Little Fingers

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