A proposal to locate a new Hamilton Police Service marine station in a West Harbour site known as Macassa Bay has raised concerns from the Bay Area Restoration Council.

In a November letter to Hamilton’s city council, BARC executive director Jim Hudson and president Debra McBride state Macassa Bay contains the harbour’s best fish habitat and has minimal water levels that are projected to drop even further.

The letter asks the city’s ongoing Harbour West Concept Plan to carefully consider other locations for the police marine unit with deeper water in a less sensitive area.

“The naturalization of Macassa Bay is a vital component of the restoration of Hamilton Harbour,” BARC’s letter states. “We support efforts to reduce the number of marine facilities operating there.”

The letter concludes by suggesting it would be a shame for the city to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for sewage treatment plant upgrades only to put a marine facility in a prime location for protection.

The letter was referred to city manager Chris Murray. By late last week, Hudson said he had not received any response.

“It came out of the blue,” Hudson said of the sudden change in the Harbour West Concept Plan which moved the location of the new police marine unit from its existing spot in the eastern corner of the study area to the west corner at Macassa Bay.

Hudson said city staff found available land in the study area – which is owned by the city –and just “plunked” the police marine unit there.

“It doesn’t make any sense to us,” he said. “They fenced their area in and didn’t look at options outside of it. We think it was a knee-jerk reaction.”

Hudson said BARC’s view is there are better spots on Hamilton’s harbour for the police marine unit.

Justin Readman, project manager for the Harbour West Concept Plan, said the plan calls for commercial intensification where the police marine unit is currently located, and that doesn’t fit with the police service’s plans for a new facility.

“In the planning process, we had to look for alternative locations,” Readman said. “Because the city only has authority over the west harbour lands, we looked at the possibility of relocating the police to Macassa Bay. We needed to identify somewhere for it to go.”

Readman said the Hamilton Police Service can search out other available locations outside the Harbour West planning area, but it’s outside of his mandate to get involved in that.

“We’ve talked to the police since the start and looked for functional alternatives for them, and nailed down a site,” Readman said.

Hamilton police spokesperson Catherine Martin said the service continues to work with the city to locate a site for its marine station.

The new facility has been identified as a goal by Hamilton Police for more than three years and remains one of several ongoing facility issues for local police.