Starting in May, the District of Muskoka will ditch waste bins on Go Home Lake in favour of new lakeside waste collection. But residents are concerned that the district hasn’t fully thought this idea through.
“The part that annoys us the most is they really aren’t listening to us,” says Geoff Hogan, the president of the Go Home Lake Cottage Owners’ Association. “They’re just saying, ‘Oh, this worked in Muskoka, it’ll work here.’ And it’s not going to work here. It’s going to be an unmitigated disaster this summer.”
More than 400 of the properties on Go Home Lake, approximately 90 per cent, are water-access only. Currently, residents boat their garbage into the Go Home Lake Marina and drop it there at a public bin site or at a second bin site in the Minors Bay Road parking lot. But the district has announced it will be removing these bins in the coming months.
Under guidance from the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation, and Parks (MECP), the district is required to remove all unlicensed waste bins by 2026, replacing them with waste collection alternatives. The transition aligns with the district’s goal to divert more waste from its landfill site, Rosewarne, which is expected to reach its limit in the next 15 years. To extend the landfill’s life, the district wants to improve its diversion rate from 35 per cent to 60 per cent over the next five years.
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To accomplish this, the district is introducing lakeside collection for cottage communities in the area, including Go Home Lake. Here’s how this will work: a garbage truck will station itself in the Minors Bay Road parking lot twice a week for one to two hours. Residents will be required to boat in at specified times and drop their garbage off at the truck.
The issue is that the Minors Bay Road parking lot is at the end of a long narrow channel, with the final section being described by Kelly Kenny, the head of advertising for the Go Home Lake Cottage Owners’ Association, as a marsh. “There could be the possibility of 400 boats at once going down this very narrow channel, which even on a normal day, if there’s two boats passing each other, is dangerous,” she says. The channel connects Go Home Lake Marina with Minors Bay Marina, and the Minors Bay Road parking lot beyond that.
Kenny says she’s concerned about all those boat wakes on the area’s shoreline. Plus, the dock across from the Minors Bay Road parking lot can only accommodate four boats, meaning residents could have to wait for extended periods before getting a spot.
The narrow channel between Go Home Lake Marina and Minors Bay Marina, Photo Courtesy Go Home Lake Cottage Owners’ Association
The alternative is that residents park their boats at the Go Home Lake Marina and either walk three kilometres to the parking lot with their garbage, or drive to the parking lot if they have a vehicle at the marina. But not everyone does, Kenny points out.
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There’s also the question of campers. Go Home Lake has large swathes of Crown land, which are popular spots for camping. Typically, at the end of a trip, campers toss their garbage in the public bins. But if those bins are removed, Kenny says they could see an increase in illegal dumping.
The district has made it clear that garbage is not to be left in the Minors Bay Road parking lot outside of collection hours. Any instances of this will be investigated and could result in fines.
As an alternative to lakeside collection, the Go Home Lake Cottage Owners’ Association has suggested the district reopen a waste depot on Twelve Mile Bay Road. This would give residents the flexibility to drop off their garbage at different times. The Twelve Mile Bay depot is currently sitting closed and unused.
“We’ve talked to the Ministry, and we pointed out that there was an unsupervised site approved on Twelve Mile Bay Road in 2016. The district was supposed to put video surveillance in, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. So, now the district’s decided to close it,” says Simon Edwards, the head of water quality for the Go Home Lake Cottage Owners’ Association. “Nonetheless, the Ministry has told us that there is no reason under the existing rules why an unsupervised site with appropriate controls and surveillance would not be approved today.”
The cottager association is working with Georgian Bay Township councillor Steve Predko to persuade the district into an alternative waste collection plan. They have yet to make any headway.
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