Wanted: public input on how to spend $10M on Hillman Marsh in Leamington

Hillman Marsh area. (Source: Wayne King)

Public input is wanted on how to spend $10 million on Hillman Marsh in Leamington.

The Essex Region Conservation Authority (ERCA) needs to fix the wetland, not only to preserve its biodiversity, but also to protect the municipal dyke.

“Hillman Marsh over the past five years has experienced very significant erosion,” says Kevin Money, ERCA’S Director of Conservation Services. “Now what we have is very high energy waves rolling literally straight into our wet land.”

Money says a ‘sand ribbon’ on the edge of the marsh has been slowly washed away by high lake levels and the ‘sediment supply’ is low.

“That sand is no longer there because people have been hardening their shorelines for the last 100 years,” says Money. “They have been halting erosion on their properties, which I get, I understand why.”

Money says however the flip side of shoreline protection is it impacts the “normal migration of sand”.

“It stops the sand from getting into the beach along the shoreline which then travels from places further east normally and migrates past Hillman marsh and all the way out past the tip of Point Pelee,” says Money.

ERCA is considering three options for how to fix the problem, with a fourth option being doing nothing.

Money doesn’t believe that’s a good option because there is a municipal dyke on the property which protects “hundreds of people”, their properties and agricultural land.

The work would include a combination of hard engineering mixed with bio engineering.

“If you were standing on these concepts, or looking at them, you'd see trees, shrubs, dunes those types of things,” says Money. “But underneath them are hard infrastructure that would ensure protection during a huge lake event.”

Officials will outline the options Tuesday at a meeting between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. at the Nature Fresh Farms Recreation Centre in Leamington.