Thank you, Mr. Weiler.
It's a long tale that I don't have time to talk about, but when I say it's a multipronged approach, it truly is a multipronged approach.
I want to go back 15 years when the community kids were told by their parents not to go to the shores of Mannion Bay where there were really high E. coli counts. There was junk and and debris all over the shores. In my experience in the Átlk'a7tsem, or Howe Sound, derelict and abandoned vessels occur where there's some place for them to tie up, where there's a safe landing spot and where they're close to amenities. All of these three components are alive and well around Mannion Bay.
The bay was inundated with mooring buoys. There were over 50 mooring buoys in an area that..... If you go by the private buoy regulations and consider the swing distance based on depth of water, I calculated that 16 buoys could be in that bay, yet there were over 50. There were, I would say, upward of 12 to 15 abandoned vessels.
We started trying to establish some tools and working with other levels of government. We obtained a licence of occupation, a tenure from the province. The reason we did this was that it gave us some authority with respect to trespass, but it's a loose tool. We were also able to achieve or instate a bylaw for charging for mooring buoys. We needed the tenure in place first to establish a mooring buoy bylaw, through which we charge a nominal fee for mooring buoys, which then goes back into the ecological restoration of the bay, but that was through tenure.
We have a use of water areas and beach area bylaw that we instated. We also have a voluntary non-anchor zone to protect the eelgrass. We couldn't have a no-anchor zone because it's not a navigable water channel; it's a protected bay. However, we have protected the eelgrass that way. Plus, we just have community involvement and lots of eyes on the bay.
We've definitely, over the last 15 years, decreased the number of abandoned vessels, and there are now no abandoned vessels in the bay. With the mooring buoy bylaw, the owners of the vessels tied to the buoys have to register with the municipality, so there's a lack of anonymity now with those folks in the bay. We have no abandoned vessels, and the mooring buoy sweeps from Transport Canada have been invaluable.
It's very hard to get Transport Canada to come out because it's a lot of staffing resources, but they have been very useful. If I could say one thing, it would be having monies to allow staff to come out and do mooring buoy sweeps. We've reduced the number of mooring buoys down to about 27, and Transport Canada and the federal government paid for the removal of all that tackle. We also impounded the buoys at the time that were abandoned and derelict and tied to those buoys. The federal government also paid for the disposal of those vessels, but since then it's been really tricky to get mooring buoy sweeps conducted in the bays that need them.
That would be my take-away, if I could say one thing today.