The Remedial Action Plan

A Remedial Action Plan or a “RAP” is an important scientific endeavor that is part of many communities around the Great Lakes. A RAP is the response of government, industry, and the local community to environmental concerns that are believed to impair the use of various resources such as drinking water, fish, and recreation. A RAP is a process to remove the Area of Concern designation by the International Joint Commission (a Canadian-American environmental “watchdog”). In this process, the environmental concerns are placed into categories called Beneficial Use Impairments so they can be monitored and assessed and ultimately the AOC can be delisted.

For the Bay of Quinte, the RAP process was started after 1985 when it was designated as an Area of Concern. A Stage One report was written in 1990 that defined the environmental conditions and problems. It outlined four ecosystem problem areas: excess nutrients, bacterial contamination, toxins, and loss of fish and wildlife habitat. In 1993, a Stage Two report was completed. This report listed eleven Beneficial Use Impairments and made 80 recommendations for remedial actions to address these “BUIs”. It also established delisting criteria (i.e. targets and measures) that need to be met to restore the BUIs.

The Bay of Quinte has made significant progress since 1993. Currently, the RAP is working to complete monitoring and data analysis to ensure that delisting targets and measures for the eleven BUIs have been met and to document the completion of the 80 recommendations for remedial actions. Once all the BUIs have met their outline criteria, the Area of Concern is “delisted”. The decision to delist an Area is made by the federal, provincial, and local RAP participants, with advice from the International Joint Commission. When an Area is delisted, however, it doesn’t mean all the work is done. Continued diligence is essential to ensure that the environmental quality is sustained into the future.