The City of Racine’s Beach Grooming Tactics are intended to reduce swimming bans at the city’s waterfront recreation areas. These tactics are intended to reduce non-point source pollution to Lake Michigan. Best Practice submitted in 2010 after implementation began in 2003.
Read about the Town of Goderich, Ontario’s beach health programs. Goderich’s Rotary Cove Beach is a Blue Flag beach, and the town also participates in the Green Ribbon beach program.
The City of Toronto, Toronto Water, and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority assessed and rehabilitated the Bluffer’s Park beach to reduce contamination from E. coli bacteria. The restored beach is now a high-quality habitat, and water quality has improved dramatically. The Bluffer’s Park beach recovery is one of the best examples of beach restoration; pre-restoration, the beach was in a health advisory 80% of the time. Post-restoration, the beach has been open 85% of the time and is now a Blue Flag beach.
In April 2010, the Cities Initiative held a workshop on best practices for beaches and coastal areas in the Great Lakes Region, specifically on the lakes that border the Province of Ontario. This series of presentations provided a sense of the current state of Ontario’s beaches and coasts, the important role of tourism and trails, opportunities to improve beaches and coasts, and inspired beach and coastal success stories from around the province. A summary of these presentations is available here.
In April 2010, the Cities Initiative hosted a Great Beaches workshop in Ontario. All presentations from the workshop are included here. Topics included the Blue Flag program, Southern Georgian Bay Initiative, Great Lakes Coastal Environmental Scan, Beach Health in Ontario, Wasaga Beach and Ontario Parks, beaches in the City of Toronto, the Ontario Provincial Trails Strategy, Promoting Great Lakes Beaches and Coasts, and Grand Bend/Lambton Shores Beaches.
All Presentations
Created by the Norfolk Climate Change Partnership (UK), the Climate Adaptation Tool (CAT) is an excel-based risk management tool designed to guide organisations through the full process of adapting to the risks that inevitable climate change poses. The 3 stage process includes:
You can download the CAT guidebook here, which explains in detail each step of the excel-based, climate change risk management tool.
You can download the Excel sheet (the tool) by clicking on the “Visit site” button below.
Adapting to Climate Change: An Introduction for Canadian Municipalities is a compendium of eleven case studies developed by Natural Resources Canada to provide municipal decision-makers and staff with examples of climate change adaptation actions, focusing on how to develop and implement strong adaptation measures. Each case study outlines the climate change impacts on the selected community, the plan-making process, measures adopted, next steps and lessons learned. The case studies included in the report are:
This Resource Guide represents a synthesis of the best available information we were able to find about the ways in which experts and practitioners across the country are working to meet the challenges outlined above. The Resource Guide is intended to help practitioners in cities and metropolitan regions resolve local issues, by showcasing promising practices in climate adaptation and resilience, and by providing efficient access to some of the very best information and resources that are available.
