KEARNEY WATERSHED ENVIRONMENTAL FOUNDATION
About Us
KWEF is divided into 7 Committees working together to protect the unique natural ecosystems of the Magnetawan Watershed for generations to come.
THE COMMITTEES ARE:
Click the committee name for a brief description of it’s responsibilities and projects.
Education Committee
The Education Committee provides the public with environmental education via our website, newsletters, brochures, workshops, and attendance at community events and cottage association meetings.
Planning & Development Committee
The Planning & Development Committee is notified by the Town of any planning applications involving waterfront development. If there is the potential for an adverse environmental impact we would review the applications for the changes in land use as they relate to the Kearney Official Plan & Bylaws and send a response to the Town or speak to Council about our concerns.
Environmental Issues Committee
The Environmental Issues Committee would take the lead if there was a problem involving things like a Blue Green Algae bloom, Invasive Phragmites, small oil spills and litter or garbage dumping . Monitoring the current situation at the graphite mine site as it relates to the DMND & MOE caretaker role will probably fall to this committee in the future.
Data Gathering Committee
The Data Gathering Committee is responsible for running the WQM (Water Quality Monitoring) program for the Kearney Watershed (currently 16 lakes). Data is reported in the yearly WQM report and will be archived in a spreadsheet database. We plan to expand the program beginning in 2021. More details can be found on the Data Gathering page.
The committee also monitors the results from the LPP (Lake Partners Program), includes their data in our WQM report and recruits new replacement samplers if they leave the program.
Monitoring the effluent stream from the Graphite mine site is currently another responsibility.
There is a possibility that we could undertake a shoreline monitoring program like the "Love Your Lake" program to track whether shorelines are being maintained in their natural state.
We have had one benthic study performed near the mine site to see if the effluent has impacted the local ecosystem. Other studies may be required.
Finally we have setup a weather station on Big Clam Lake to provide us with local temperature and precipitation data. We also gather surface lake water temperature and lake level during the ice free season and snow accumulation during the winter months.
The WQM Reports, LPP data, Benthic Study and weather data are all included on the Data Gathering page.
Communications Committee
The Communications Committee manages both the Newsletter and the Website.
Membership Committee
The Membership Committee is responsible for maintaining membership lists and contact information, as well as collecting dues, from regular (voting) and associate (non-voting) members, business supporters, and cottage and property owners associations
Fundraising Committee
Currently our Fundraising Committee is all members of KWEF. We recently applied to the Great Lakes Guardian Fund for a grant and made it to the short list which is pretty good for a first attempt, but ultimately we were unsuccessful in obtaining a grant.
That particular application took a month of our time. As part of our volunteer drive we need to have a group dedicated to fundraising and grant applications. so that it could allow us to expand what we do - especially in the education field or if we have a major problem with Invasive Phragmites for example.