GLWS 2022 AGM Minutes | September 10, 2022

Minutes of the 2022 meeting of the Society. Sept 10, 2022

1. The meeting was held at the Meridian beach community hall and discussion was opened at 10:00 AM by president Paul Anderson. approximately 35 members of the society attended

2. the minutes of the 2021 meeting and an agenda for the meeting had been sent out in advance to the membership.

3. President Paul Anderson opened the meeting with a request for discussion of the agenda and two items were added and then the agenda was moved by Rick Assinger and Kent Coleman.

4. the minutes of last year’s meeting were approved by motion from a Lance and Les.

5. Past president Craig McLeod reviewed the progress on our settling pond project and told us about three completed projects and that the final project in our grant was going to be done near Doef’s green houses where an additional settling pond would be built to handle runoff that comes into that area and off the roofs of the green houses etc. this will involve about $11,000 of expenditure by our society and $100,000 expenditures by Doef’s. Craig also described the progress had been made in removing the Buffalo from the streambed there and allowing the natural vegetation to flourish and act as a filter on the water going to Gull lake. It was agreed that this had been a very successful project for our society and made a difference to several major streams that flow into the lake and improve their quality by reducing the amount of sediment that reaches the lake. Members congratulated Craig for having led this project and completed it.

6. We then preceded to review prepared materials which are attached to these notes and involve the following.

7. A president report by Paul Anderson

8. a review of the lake level chart . we were fortunate in nearly 11 inches of summer rain falling in our area and so the lake is at pretty much the same level as last fall. Annual evaporation is something like 17 inches a year end the long term rate of decline of the lake before stabilization was two inches a year. when there’s sufficient water in the river the lake can be raised up to four inches by the stabilization system which was built in the mid 70s. The winter runoff has been weak in the last two years due to unusually low snowfalls.

9. A detailed review with photographs of our testing project to prove up pressurized filtration to allow the restart of our stabilization system without transferring Prussian carp to the lake. we felt that our project and the associated report by Stantec engineering clearly demonstrated that carp and their eggs could be reliably filtered out. Unfortunately Alberta Environment “AEP” has not responded to the report yet in spite of having had it for over six months and been prodded numerous times. it was agreed that we were probably going to have to use political influence to get AEP to respond.

10.Norvel Horner will write a letter to the current minister of environment and previous minister Jason Nixon outlining our frustration with AEP not responding to our detailed technical reports.

11.we will likely follow this up with a number of letters from members and interested parties to put some pressure on the government to act on this issue.

12.Members suggested that we should point out in our letter that the lakes health is important to a range of society, not just property owners and that we should also be sure to mention the importance of this technology to other stabilization systems particularly Buffalo lake.

13.we had a couple of volunteers to help with a social media campaign to put pressure on the government if they did not respond positively to this letter being Les Laroque and Marc Godin.

14.It was pointed out that the cost of a filter would be approximately $400,000 and that AEP minister Nixon had said they did not want to fund it so that it will probably be necessary for the society to work with the municipalities around the lake to raise the $400,000 and get the system installed.

15.The point was made that AEP has fallen down on the maintenance at the provincial park and Ebeling day use area on the South end of the lake and it seems that they reduced their maintenance of the park.

16.It was pointed out that when the AEP redid the boat launch at the South end of the lake that they had a program to fence off the area with silt curtains and that they sampled for fish and apparently took DNA testing and found no evidence of carp present- our Belief is that carp are not yet in lake and we certainly do not want them here. Apparently they are sometimes transmitted by birds ingesting the eggs and then excreting them still viable into another water body.

17.Secretary Norval advised that our society had been invited to make a presentation at the next meeting of the stabilization committee which will take place October 28 th . since norval is likely to be out of the country at that time it was agreed that Paul Anderson and Keith Nesbitt would represent our society at the stabilization meeting of the municipalities around the lake.

18.Secretary Norval reviewed emails (see attached) From Alberta Health Services related to their monitoring of beach water quality. There were no exceedances at Gull this year and no closures of any beaches but the only beach they were testing was Ebeling.

19.Alberta Health advised that they adopted more stringent standards for beaches with the lowering in the allowable content of microsystem and the lowering of the cell count. this latter might be a concern for gull as we have previously had Ebeling beach closed due to a high cell count and then also later for an enterococcus exceedance.

20.We then reviewed the potential targets for the society which are covered in the attachment

21. One of the items added to the agenda was an update by Rick Assinger on their committee work to look at the extension of sewers around the lake. Rick said this was controversial on the South end of the lake where some community members have spent up to $30,000 building a new sewage handling system on site for their own property and so they would not be too interested in spending significant money to connect to a sewer system . however the point was also made that some of those old systems at the South end put septic tank effluent right into sand where there’s really no treatment that occurs and nutrients eventually get into the groundwater and into the lake. Rick’s committee will continue with the work as the sewers that have been built around both pigeon lake and Sylvan lake are probably an example for where it’s likely to end up for Gull lake. It was also pointed out that this is a priority of Lacombe county. it is likely to take very significant government money to make this happen as installing sewers into an existing community where the roads are paved is expensive. Apparently the old council at the summer village of gull lake (SVGL) was not in favor of this project but the new council is interested. Bentley have may have some capacity in their sewage treating system or it’s possible that like Sylvan sewage could be piped to Red Deer.

22.One member from the South side of the lake pointed out that she had spent $28,000 installing what is called a Class B system which actually processes the sewage pretty significantly before releasing it to a field. Director Kent Coleman was familiar with systems of that type which are required at BC lakes and do significant treating of the sewage almost like a tiny municipal plant.

23.It was pointed out that there were no beach closures at pigeon lake this year which may be in part due to the installation of the sewers around the lake and the fact that people’s septic tank fields no longer feed right into the lake. the reduction in nutrients in the lake is probably reducing the level of blue-green algae.

24.Secretary norvel provided an update on the activities of the Alberta lake management society “ALMS” which is an important resource. ALMS completed water testing on 26 lakes in Alberta in 2021 of which Gull was one and showed excerpts from their report which shown which indicate that gull lake’s water quality was actually steady or improving since first testing was conducted in the 1980’s. Our society provided the volunteer boat operators for the testing as we have always done and we have been involved in the testing of the water at Gull lake since the 1980s. The full ALMS reports are available on their website

25.a motion was proposed by Craig McCloud and Rick askinger that we should put signage on the various settling pond projects that our society had done so that people recognize them as an important contributor to the water quality of the lake. Craig undertook to proceed with the project using society funds.

26.Election of directors, Paul advised that he was stepping down as president of the society due to other commitments. we decided that we would elect to board of directors and that they would then choose who would serve as officers

27.the following were nominated to serve as directors Paul Anderson as past president, Other continuing directors were, norval Horner, Doug Bradley, Lon Kasha, Kent Coleman, Keith Nesbitt, Lance Dzaman, Craig MacCloud and Glenn Fraser, we had two new directors step forward being Mark Godin and Brad Turner. Ray Prins has been very effective in our political efforts to move filtration forward and we expect will continue but did not seem keen on continuing on the board so we did not continue his nomination. Francis Savile was willing to serve but also quite willing to step aside if we had a full slate. In light of having two new directors we did not add he or Ray to the list. Les Larocque and Henry Brander moved that this slate be elected as our directors and the motion was passed.

28.Paul entertained a motion for adjournment approximately noon and thanked everyone for attending and for their interest in this society and their suggestions for the future

29. Attached presentation materials should be considered as part of the minutes.