A Fall River woman is working on a university biology class project looking at the water advisories over the past two summers in the Grand Lake area. (Healey photo)


FALL RIVER: A Fall River woman is working on a university biology class project looking at the water advisories over the past two summers in the Grand Lake area.

Meg Smith has grown up in the Fall River and been going to Oakfield Park all her life.

“It’s my favourite park,” said Smith recently.

She chose to do her project on what’s been happening in recent summers with Grand Lake and water advisories since she spends a lot of time at Oakfield — investigating the causes, possible solutions, and (most importantly) impact on locals.

“My main focus for the survey is on impacts to recreation, but given the fact that Grand Lake is a water supply it has had intermittent impacts on access to clean drinking water,” she said. “And of course there have been some unfortunate incidents with pets passing away from swimming in/drinking the water.”

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Smith’s project also touches on other lakes that HRM residents use for recreation in the summer, so one doesn’t necessarily need to spend time at Laurie/Oakfield Park or live near Grand Lake to do the survey.

The plan for the last part of the project is to make an informational piece of content.

There’s a question on the survey about what people think would be the most effective mode of communicating information about water advisories.

“So far it seems that a social media post/video is the favourite,” said Smith.

To take the Google Doc survey until March 22 you can find it at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdjJzqqp4-Nx3rEMx_7JK2mVVbBCAoVPHcp7ZQycPBECfJp3A/viewform?usp=sf_link