Local man awarded for efforts to clean Bay of Quinte

By Shelby Wye

Manfred Koechlin has been a driving force behind cleaning up the Bay of Quinte.

“I started sailing on the bay of Quinte in 1967. I noticed the poor water quality and the fact that the Bay of Quinte was not what you would call a healthy body of water,” said Koechlin.

Koechlin accepted the ‘Back to the Bay’ award Wednesday night from the Bay of Quinte Remedial Action Plan at the group’s State of the Bay at Meyer’s Pier in Belleville. He was the third recipient of the award.

He first learned how serious the problem was in 1985 when the International Joint Commission (IJC) identified the Bay of Quinte as one of 42 badly polluted bodies of water in the Great Lakes.

“I went to the meetings and was horrified to learn about this,” said Koechlin. “I decided to contact a number of people to say okay, as a community, let us participate in the protest, at that time, of identifying the problems and in such, participate in rehabilitating the bay of Quinte.”

BQRAP was formed after this realization, and the group recognized 14 major environmental challenges. They vary from degradation of fish and wildlife populations to beach closures. The group has managed to make significant improvements in every single one of these environmental challenges.

Sarah Midlane-Jones has also been part of BQRAP since it began. She has seen Manfred in action, and felt he was well worthy of the award which goes to a member who has gone above and beyond with their participation in the group.

“For the remedial plan, Manfred Koechlin is the quintessential volunteer that made things happen. He certainly has dedicated a lot of his personal time over the years to drive the (plan) forward,” said Midland-Jones.

“I am quite pleasantly surprised,” said Koechlin. “The protest has made enormous difference, and the Bay of Quinte is a lot healthier. But, there’s a lot of things that still need to be done.”

Over the past 20 years, the group has rehabilitated the bay from being in stage one, where the problems are identified, to nearing the brink of stage three. Stage three is the final stage, where the bay’s quality just needs to be maintained.

Getting to stage three also requires the group to inform the public of the bay’s improvements.

Midlane-Jones is the communications coordinator of the group, and helped host the event.

“Part of D-listing, getting off the area of concern list, is public consultation. Public input is hugely important,”she said. “So we wanted everyone to come down here tonight to ask their questions, their concerns. We’d love to hear what they have to say.”