Celebrating and watching the Kingston Ontario waterfront

A NEW FORMAT FOR CORK is announced today.

According to the press release, CORK 2009 will play-out ike this:

• August 19 - 22: CORK International Event for Youth and Development dinghy classes.
• August 23 - 27: CORK Olympic Classes Event for high-performance competition in Olympic and invited "development" dinghy classes.
• August 28 - 30: Offshore and One Design Keelboat and Dinghy Classes for Offshore (PHRF) classes, one design Keelboats, Able Sail, and international dinghy classes.

This is great news on a number of levels.

For example, for the first time in many years, there is no overlap between CORK events and the obnoxious 1000 Islands Kingston Poker Run, currently scheduled for August 7-8 2009.

Another plus: better segmenting the events means better cohesion amongst participants. Youth and young sailors together; high-performance sailors together; and keelboat with international-class dinghies all together. This makes planning the all-important social packages more straightforward.

Another plus: dates for the Keelboats and international-class dinghies -- generally older adult sailors -- dovetail with the 2009 Kingston Blues Festival.

Another plus: CORK 2009 spans just 12-days of competition, compared to 18-days for CORK 2008. This will be much easier on the volunteer-base, so better regattas for all-concerned are likely to result.

Any downsides? It's hard to quibble with any of this.

Also booked for 2009 so far: cats!

• July 17-19 - Hobie 16 Women and Youth North American Championship
• July 20-24 - Hobie 16 Open North American Championship

THE 2015 PAN-AM GAMES BID goes to Toronto's City Council today.

If (Toronto) council endorses the bid, a more detailed report is expected in February that will help lay out a venue plan and a detailed look at the financial, social, economic and infrastructure implications of the 2015 games. A formal bid must be submitted to the Pan American Sports Organization by April.

So KEDCO is running out of time to get the Sailing event for Kingston.

Here's the 6-page City of Toronto Staff Report on the matter.

The (Toronto) City Manager recommends that (Toronto) City Council:

1. Endorse the City of Toronto's role as the host city and participant in a bid to be submitted by the Bid Corporation to host the 2015 Pan American/ParaPan American Games in Toronto and communities in the Greater Golden Horseshoe region.

It's not looking good.

PHOTOS OF NEW WIND FARM TOWERS can be viewed on Gordon Campbell's blog.

Kingston's Waterfront has changed, starting now.

AT COUNCIL this upcoming Tuesday, two related items about Crawford Wharf. Coincidence?

• $130,000 request for overdue maintenance of Crawford Wharf.
• A Kingston-based promoter is seeking support from Council for Kingston to become a 2009 port of call for Pearl Seas Cruises and their 335-foot cruise ship Pearl Mist using, you guessed it, Crawford Wharf.

But,

In real terms most cruise ships would start off by including Kingston as a port-of-call with a brief stay of several hours in port. This would offer the downtown merchants an opportunity to sell their wares and nearby and mid-distance attractions to be included in shore excursions.

Therefore this is for quickies, the 200 passengers being roughly equivalent to just three busloads, a few times per year, for a few hours each time.

How Crawford Wharf trumps other deferred maintenance in Kingston, nevermind just waterfront-related deferred maintenance, is anybody's guess.

THE FIRST WOLFE ISLAND WIND TURBINE, Tower 19, is on the north side of Reeds Bay.

It won't appear very large when viewed from Kingston. Some subsequent towers will be 3-miles closer to Kingston than this one.

NAVY BAY'S EASTERN SHORE is a half-mile stretch of shoreline that runs from RMC to Point Henry.

It's less than a mile from downtown Kingston.

It's inaccessible, derelict and, when explored in mid-October 2008, trash-strewn.

Through various levels of government, taxpayers pump millions into Fort Henry each year. From a waterfront accessibility and recreation perspective, we get nothing back.

Kingston's Waterfront is all the poorer for that.

A NEW WEBSITE for the Kingston-based Canadian Yachting Association. It's a huge improvement.

But there's no CYA blog, and no news syndication in RSS format. In that sense, it's also a disappointment.

Hopefully those relatively easy-gets are coming.

THE 2015 TORONTO PAN-AMERICAN GAMES BID, specifically the sailing event, is discussed in Wednesday's Whig.

What The Whig doesn't tell us is the Toronto bid has been highly public for three weeks already.

There's more: Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty was on-hand in Acapulco, Mexico to launch the bid just prior to Thanksgiving. The Toronto bid is slick; their ducks are aligned. Harvey Rosen wasn't on the trip.

From The Globe and Mail, three weeks ago on October 3rd:

The bid is Toronto-branded, meaning organizers will peddle the Pan Am bid internationally using the country's largest city as a hook. However, Toronto's main events likely will be the opening and closing ceremonies. Sports venues are most likely to go into the region covered by the 905 area code: Vaughan, Markham, Durham, Peel-Halton and the Niagara Region.

Here's the bid home page. There's nothing specific there yet.

But there's definitely a sense that Kingston's on the outside, looking-in at this point.

More to the point: each time Toronto bids for a major games, why is Kingston always the supplicant for the sailing event? It's worth asking: Hey Toronto! what's your problem?

Maybe one reason Toronto seems to come-up short in its games bids is because of Toronto's inability to leverage its proven world-class, world-renowned assets, like Kingston for sailing, for example.

Another way to look at it is: if the Toronto 2015 bid doesn't showcase Kingston for sailing, then perhaps Toronto doesn't deserve to win. Certainly everyone will know, at least as far as sailing is concerned, that it's all about the politics, not the competitors.

What's not in doubt is this: Since 1976 Summer Games, Kingston hasn't been resting on its laurels. Kingston has earned it.

THE LIVING AT THE BARRICADES PODCAST from October 16, 2008 titled Landfills, Leachate and Law is very interesting because it contains a lengthy segment on the Belle Park leaching landfill case, which the City of Kingston fought for eight years all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

That was embarassing for the City of Kingston. Harvey Rosen was Mayor of Kingston through most of the the appeals.

The segment following Kingston's is about the City of Hamilton which pled guilty to similar charges at the first opportunity, wasting no time towards fixing the problem.

THE 120-FOOT HMS DETROIT REPLICA, which berthed at Confed last week, is the subject of photos submitted by John Duerkop. The vessel is on its way to Newport, R.I..

This replica was the subject of a Whig aticle last week about long-ago scuttled plans for a waterfront heritage centre in Kingston. The Whig re-surfaces the notion of transforming the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes into a showpiece tourism attraction in this Monday's editorial.

To be blunt, it's a silly idea.

Considering the average Kingstonian has no relationship whatsoever with the waterfront, local-citizen access should come long before the so-called needs of hypothetical "wealthy european tourists". Kingston needs to become a better place to live, not a better tourist trap.

STILL MORE IMPRESSIVE SIGHTS at Kingston Marina recently as they hoisted-out Island Belle for bottom cleaning and painting.

Thanks again to John Duerkop for these photos.

In The Whig today: Underwater wires connect Kingston, island.

Here's a link to a nice diagram of the cable's route.

Also, here are photos of the excavation activity in Sand Bay in August, where the cable lands on the Kingston-side.

And THIS IS AWESOME, especially the latter parts of the 53-pages titled "WOLFE ISLAND CABLE ROUTE SURVEY".

IMPRESSIVE SIGHTS on Kingston's waterfront late last week. MetalCraft Marine rolled-out the hull of their largest fireboat ever.

The purpose of this was to mate it with its superstructure. Hulls are built upside-down so rotating the hull was part of the process.

This fireboat is destined for service in Tampa, Florida. Thanks to John Duerkop for the photos.

THE AMHERST ISLAND WIND INFORMATION WEB SITE seems worth bookmarking. It has an RSS feed as well.

THIS MONTH-OLD HALF-BAKED WATERFRONT-RELATED MOTION was again debated then soundy defeated at Council last night.

GARISH NEW STREET LIGHTS, seven of them, on Point Frederick. They are spaced less than 30m apart.

These are a butt-ugly addition to a prime piece of Kingston Waterfront.

THE BLACK ANGUS was hauled-out for the winter on Tuesday at Kingston Marina. Click the photo to see more.

The Black Angus is the 100-year-old 28-foot wood double-ended clinker fishing boat restored by volunteers at the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes and re-launched this August after 7,000 hours of restauration.

Thanks to John Duerkop for the photos.

DIESEL FUEL SPILL, hundreds of litres worth, by a Wolfe Island wind project tug boat off Dawson point, which is the winter ferry dock on Wolfe Island.

Update: Thursday's Whig story.

Update: CBC.ca's report.

Update: More from CKWS-TV.

THE BIG JIM SHOWDOWN, this weekend at POH, rises from the ashes of the WFN Canadian Open debacle.

This pro/am fishing event will run in support of well-known fisherman, Jim McLaughlin, and his battle with cancer, while also honouring our Canadian Forces.

It starts Friday at the Junior Officer's Mess at CFB Kingston, Saturday and Sunday at POH.

STUDYING THE LIFE OF THE LAKE in today's Whig, by Brian Johnson, about the research of nautical archeologist Ben Ford.

More about The Museum of Underwater Archaeology and The Lake Ontario Maritime Cultural Landscape Project.

THE SEPTEMBER 2008 ISSUE OF THOUSAND ISLANDS LIFE is now online.

Susan W. Smith is the new editor replacing Paul Malo who recently passed away.

Inside, A trip to Kingston's Rosemount Inn, among other articles.

IT'S ALWAYS INTERESTING to read how visitors percieve Kingston.

Here's a narrative titled Day 77 Drive from Keeseville to Kingston, Ontario by a couple who arrived last week via Horne's Ferry towing a pop-up trailer.

Some of their photos are excellent, albums here and here, particularly this photo and this one.

Then there's this picture showing a rooftop air-conditioner on the Clarence Street Post Office destroying an otherwise enchanting sightline. That's Kingston.

TWO WATERFRONT-RELATED ITEMS ON THE AGENDA of the City's Arts, Recreation & Community Policies Committee meeting of Thursday September 25th.

• Status Report on the Richardson Beach and bath house enhancements. Beware, the diagrams in this document's exhibits are unreadable. The City Clerk's office actually does work to make the illustrations unreadable, as opposed to simply "Print to PDF" which would give us a perfect copy. Better version here, here, here, and here.
• Mr. Mark Siemons Chair of the Marine Museum Board of Trustees, will speak regarding the consideration for enhanced municipal support for the Marine Museum.

FIVE-ANCHOR ECO-RATINGS have finally been awarded to both POH and Confed by the Ontario Marina Operators Association's Clean Marine Program.

The City of Kingston-operated marinas join Collins Bay Marina which received its 5-anchor rating in 2005, one of the first in Ontario to achieve it.

Other local eco-rated marinas include Kingston Marina, Treasure Island Marina, and Loyalist Cove Marina.

Local OMOA-member marinas that have no eco-rating at all include Rideau Marina and Blue Woods Marina.

THE GREAT CANADIAN SHORELINE CLEANUP is the subject of a Whig article yesterday. The volunteer cleanup is between September 20 and 28th.

For more information about the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup call 1-877-427-2422, local co-ordinator Serge Landry at 541-6000, extension 3664. Volunteers can also go to www.vanaqua.org/cleanup.

NO RAIN in the latest 14-day outlook.

It surely won't turn-out that way, but it's a notable and rare forecast.

Summer's here.

CHRIS HARVEY, CKWS NEWSWATCH get suckered.

To be fair, it's all mainstream media reporting so far on the so-called HMCS Montreal and her sister ships.

THE FINAL OF THE WFN 2008 BASS TOUR, THE CANADIAN OPEN, which was supposedly coming to Kingston September 19-21, isn't going to happen.

Apparently word of the cancellation has been known in fishing circles since late May.

By the looks of this, the folks at WFN are adept at self-congratulating press-releases announcing the event (November 2007), then later announcing sponsors (Lakeport Beer in March 2008).

But when things derail, mum's the word.

The event is still listed on the KEDCO website.

Related: K7's news item from last November.

A DISMAL WIND FORECAST FOR SATURDAY has prompted the organizers of the Pro-Am Canadian Freestyle Jam windsurfing championship to postpone until next weekend.

THE PROPOSED RENAMING OF BREAKWATER PARK, a move by the Kingston Historical Society, is on the Municipal Heritage Committee agenda for the September 8th meeting.

Breakwater Park is the 8.4 acre waterfront park along King St West that today contains, among other things, the iconic sculpture named "Time".

The proposal is to name the park after Lt.-Col. John Bradstreet, the British officer who led the "battle" to overthrow Fort Frontenac 250-years ago.

John Bradstreet had 3,000 men at his disposal against 110 French soldiers garrisoned inside the Fort. The French surrendered without a fight. Then Bradstreet plundered, burned, and demolished the fort. Then Bradstreet left town.

Which raises the questions: Why? Bradstreet, and why Kingston's premier waterfront park?

Should such honours be reserved for, say, people who actually lived here? Does Kingston's history not have valorous military commanders who didn't enjoy a 30-1 man advantage upon arrival? How about, say, somebody who actually built something? As opposed to John Bradstreet, who extracted a quick surrender, then plundered and demolished the place before immediately moving on.

More on John Bradstreet at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.

MILESTONE AT RAVENSVIEW, from Allen Lucas, Utilities Kingston engineer.

It gives me great pleasure to inform everyone that on September 4th at about 4:00 pm, wastewater was started flowing through the Biological Aerated Filters. This signifies the culmination of a lot of hard work and tremendous effort on the part of the construction team, the engineering team and Utilities Kingston operations staff.

GEOFF WEBSTER, official photographer for CORK, has posted 570 photos taken last month at the Contender World Championships here in Kingston.

This is, by far, the largest online collection of photos of a regatta in Kingston.

Geoff has some 80,000+ regatta photographs since 1980 in his archives.

AT COUNCIL TONIGHT is a motion to...

"....prevent any development within 120 m of the high water mark of the Rideau waterway from the Lasalle Causeway to the northern boundary of the city without the permission of Council."

Most people don't realize the northern extent of the City of Kingston.

FYI, this motion includes:

• The Cataraqui River (both shores)
• Colonel By Lake (both shores)
• The South shore of River Styx
• The South Shore of Cranberry Lake
• The South Shore of Little Cranberry Lake
• The South Shore of part of Whitefish Lake
• And both shores, or just the South shore, of all the waterways interconnecting the above.

This is a job for a proper Conservation Authority, one that doesn't give a rats-ass if your name is Brit Smith or Byron Springer.

Details in The Whig, but there is no sense therein of the full extent of this.

WE HAVE A NEW LOCAL SHORE DIVE off Kingston General Hospital.

Divers from Preserve Our Wrecks Kingston laid a line leading to the charted wreck yesterday. Quoting the POW Blog post about it:

The wreck is in very good condition; one of the more intact examples of what is certainly a sailing vessel and probably associated with use on the canal systems. It's almost a hundred feet long and about 24 feet wide. Care should be taken by visiting divers to avoid disturbing and damaging many upright features that have stood the test of time.

The wreck is well known already; it features on local charts, but it has not previously been of great interest, since it lies in the path of frequent boat traffic and didn't have any line to it from shore.

Update: New photos and video of this wreck.

See the updated List of Shore Dives near Kingston on the K7 "Wrecks" page. The list now contains 17 shore dives.

While you are there, there's a new Google Map pin on the position of the HMS Montreal which was supposedly "discovered" earlier this month leading to much fanfare in mainstream media.

EXTREME PRESSURE CHANGES NEAR WIND TURBINE BLADES injures bat lungs, according to a recent University of Calgary study.

A bat mortality study supervised by U of C biology professor Robert Barclay that began in 2006 has determined that the vast majority of bats found dead below turbines near Pincher Creek suffered severe injuries to their respiratory systems consistent with a sudden drop in air pressure -- called barotrauma -- that occurs when the animals get close to turbine blades...

The study shows that 90 per cent the bats examined after death showed signs of internal hemorrhaging consistent with barotraumas while only about half of the bats showed any evidence of direct contact with the blades.

So wind turbines are deadlier to flying animals than just the trauma of contact with the blades. Flying close to a blade can kill too.

RIDEAU LAKES MISS THE BOAT, according to the Saturday Ottawa Citizen.

Area has everything except a visible attempt to promote itself

This area between Smiths Falls and Kingston has lakes of all sizes, the Rideau Canal, the Cataraqui Trail, fine fishing, decent golf courses, excellent scenery and some quaint towns. What it doesn't have is any visible effort to promote or package all that attractive stuff.

That's so true. The Township of Rideau Lakes is an independent entity and, if the author is correct, then tourism-wise Kingston has an evidently weak northern neighbor with tons of potential.

Just like Quebec City benefits from Mt. Ste-Anne, and Montreal benefits from the Eastern Townships, Kingston stands to gain from having stronger tourism players in the region.

Not that Kingston currently contributes much regionally. Currently, Kingston's tourism "region", its sole focus, covers barely a square-mile.

If Kingston can shake its myopia and break free from the cult of Downtown Kingston, then maybe it could eventually help strengthen, and center, a vast and dynamic region.

VIDEO FROM THE CONTENDER WORLDS on YouTube.

Day 1 was sailed in light and shifty breezes.

Note the damage from Snake Island Shoal shown at the end of the video. The Contender Worlds, a 34-competitor event, are being sailed on Foxtrot course, out beyond Kingston Harbour.

While you are there, here's an interesting tour of Soren Andreasen's boat from Denmark.

The last time this happened, back in April, it didn't turn out that way.

THE BLACK ANGUS SAILS AGAIN in this weekend's edition of Kingston This Week.

It's about the successful 7,000-hour restoration of a 100-year-old 28-foot wood double-ended clinker fishing boat by volunteers at the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes.

LOCAL SAILORS, and many sailors who regularly train here, posted some great results at the Canadian Youth National Sailing Championships -- see results for the Alpha and Bravo racing areas -- that ended yesterday in Halifax. In summary:

• Robert Davis, Tom Ramshaw, Matthew Ryder, and Justin Norton were 1st, 4th, 5th and 6th of 25 boats in the Laser class.
• Danielle Boyd (crew), and Peter and Paul Ehvert finished 1st and 2nd in the 29er class.
• Charlotte Skinner finished 3rd in the 27-boat Laser Radial class.

Note the other good results by some of our younger up-and-comers.

Update: August 16th Whig Article on Danielle Boyd.

CONTENDERS FOR SALE after the World Championships, which runs between August 19-23. The ask for these used single-handed trapeze boats from UK competitors ranges between $1,900 and $7,000.

Some older boats from Toronto are also available after the worlds. Contact Neil Smith (contenderkc62@yahoo.com).

BARGE TRANSPORTATION AND OTHER LOGISTICS for the Wolfe Island Wind Project are the subject of an interesting article in today's Whig.

The large barge is loaded in Ogdensburg, NY, and unloads at the Wolfe Island winter ferry dock. Meanwhile, on Wolfe Island, lots of preparations are well underway.

LYME DISEASE TICKS ARE SPREADING in the region, according to today's Whig Standard.

Related: prior posts on Lyme Disease.

EXCELLENT OP-ED BY JAMIE SWIFT in today's Whig Standard about the obnoxious Poker Run, which is this weekend.

A group of concerned citizens has been distributing postcards around town protesting the poker run. Here you can download the front and the back of that postcard, which is addressed to Mayor Harvey Rosen.

The "CITY OF KINGSTON 2008 WATERFRONT PATHWAY" is the subject of a pamphlet being distributed to tourists at all the usual places.

"Kingston's Waterfront Pathway" is also the subject of a web page in the "Visitors" area of the City of Kingston Website.

Only two-thirds of the 9 (not 8) Km suggested by the brochure could actually be considered "on waterfront".

Long stretches along King Street, with no water whatsoever in evidence, are part of the suggested "waterfront" pathway.

Look closely: they suggest you walk around the K-Rock Centre as part of the waterfront tour.

That's odd, because it steers walkers away from an exquisite stretch of our waterfront: the Lasalle Causeway, the RMC grounds, then Point Frederick, then Navy Bay and its very active boating facilities, Fort Henry of course, and then Point Henry all the way around behind the Fort. Then up and around for the best vista in town, from the very top of Fort Henry Hill.

Not a word about any of that. A full 5 Km continuously by the water, including majestic elevated views of the city and the harbour. All of it walkable and cycleable. This is easily the longest uninterrupted "waterfront pathway" we've got.

But it merits no mention whatsoever in the City of Kingston tourist brochure about our walkable waterfront.

They've printed some 14,000 copies over the past two years. Here's who's responsible for grossly misrepresenting our walkable waterfront to visitors.

Respect for waterfront means never, EVER selling it short. In this town, in the Harvey Rosen era, disrespect for our waterfront is rampant.

THIS PHOTO from the 1980 Laser Worlds is worth checking out.

Tillerman is running a caption contest for it. Nevermind the captions suggested so far, some of the comments about Kingston and CORK are interesting. When it comes to reputation, infrastructure and attention to details count for a lot.

Click for a larger version.

Trivia: who won the 1980 Laser Worlds in Kingston, and who was the top Canadian? Answer. See also Women's Worlds results.

WATER LEVELS ARE STILL ABOVE AVERAGE, about a foot above last year at this time, after peaking impressively in mid-May.

The big news is upstream: Lake Superior water levels have rebounded remarkably since this time last year.

MARINAS.COM has a very impressive database of aerial photographs of marinas all over the world, including many in the region. Have a look.

In Kingston

• Blue Woods Marina
• CFB Kingston Yacht Club
• Collins Bay Marina
• Cunningham Rd Marina
• Kingston Marina
• Music Marina
• Portsmouth Olympic Harbour
• Rideau Marina
• Royal Military College
• Treasure Island Marina
• Trident Yacht Club

In Gananoque

• Gananoque Municipal Marina
• Brennan Marine
• Clark's Marina
• Gananoque Inn
• Gordon Marine
• Hunt's Marina

In Bath

• Loyalist Cove Marina

FINALLY the KFL&A Health Unit has a dedicated beach report web page.

Getting that took over a year. Think: pulling teeth.

Another plus: The Health Unit's page lists 41 beaches, covering a wide area.

By contrast, the City of Kingston's "Environment" page lists just 11 city beaches plus Big Sandy Bay.

But the Health Unit lists four swimming spots in the City that, for some reason, don't appear on the City website:

• The PUC dock at the foot of Collingwood street,
• the Collins Bay Pier,
• Lemoine Point which, oddly, the Health Unit classifies under "Cataraqui Conservation Authority". This area is within the City of Kingston, and should be listed as such.
• What they call "Lake Ontario Hospital", which is either behind the Kingston Psychiatric Hospital, or Breakwater Park. We're supposed to guess.

So the City and the Health Unit currently aren't on the same page when it comes to keeping swimmers healthy.

Downsides: The Health Unit and the City of Kingston can't seem to agree on names for some beaches. Respect for our beaches surely starts with referring to them properly in official communications.

Here's what needs to drastically improve next because this still isn't good enough. Vital information still isn't being disclosed, like:

• The date of the sample was collected.
• The specific level of E.coli found, as they do in Hastings & Prince Edward Counties.
• How, exactly, was the sample collected? Was it from a boat perhaps hundreds of feet off the beach, or within a few yards of the waterline where children actually swim?

Related: A swimmable Lake Ontario, Lake Ontario Waterkeeper Podcast from June 5, 2008. This covers, in detail, what's wrong with the current state of beach reporting around Lake Ontario.

The bottom line: thanks for finally creating a web page, but we really need way better information to make choices. See, for example, the Hastings & Prince Edward Counties Health Unit beach report.

MASS-SWIM ROUNDUP

• Lake Ontario Waterkeeper made the Richardson Beach mass swim the main subject of its weekly podcast. (You can subscribe to the Living At the Barricades Podcast via iTunes).

  This is interesting: starting at the 27:50 minute mark of the 30-minute podcast, Waterkeeper Mark Mattson urges cities to stop pitching the press about "unknown" sources of E. coli, and get out to the beaches and actually investigate. Co-host Krystyn Tully then suggests how they should be doing that.

  Also Lake Ontario Waterkeeper has posted event photos in their new space on Flickr.

• The Whig Standard ("dozens of people") and Kingston This Week ("Hundreds take back the beach") both printed reports this week.

• Here's the transcript posted by CKWS-TV News on July 23rd.

The mass swim, a wakeup call in support of Richardson Beach, happened last Tuesday, July 22nd.

GORDON ISLAND IS CLOSED TEMPORARILY because the racoon population is posing a serious threat to public safety. The island will be closed to the public from 1 p.m. on Sunday, July 27, 2008 until 11 a.m. on Friday, August 1, 2008.

Gordon Island, part of the St. Lawrence Islands National Park of Canada, is 3-miles east of Gananoque.

RICHARDSON BEACH PRELIMINARY PLANS are posted. So far it's just sketches, no text.

It also appears to be mostly not about the beach, but about landscaping above the beach in the form of pathways and lookouts.

What's with the rock-bounded funnel-shaped groin in the water? The rationale for that will be interesting to hear. Someone should probably ask if the designer has ever been to a beach people actually use for swimming. Note there's no roped-off swimming area, no swimmers, and no windsurfers shown in any of the drawings.

Updated: Mixed reaction from members of on the Kingston Boardsailing Association. Boardsailors are the folks who currently use Richardson Beach the most. Among other points, the current drawings show drastic cuts to the area they need for rigging and laying-out sailboards.

THE 25-PAGE REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL for consulting services for the development of a master plan for Lake Ontario Park has been released by the City.

The RFP is due Wednesday, August 13, 2008.

Related:

• Looking for a plan from March 23rd of this year. Evidently there hasn't been much progress in this dossier over the past 4-months.
• $8.5 million budgeted through 2013 for Lake Ontario Park upgrades, from June 16 2008.
• Lake Ontario Waterkeeper's Beach Report 2007 mentions "Lake Ontario Municipal Beach" (sic), from October 2007, based on a visit in July 31st, 2006.
• $30,000 budgeted for the Lake Ontario Park Master Plan from March 20, 2007. That's been boosted to a maximum of $125,000 in the RFP.
• Three LOP concept plans from June 30th, 2006. Two years ago already.
• Also, the Lake Ontario Park article on Wikipedia needs work.

EDITORIAL AND OP-ED pieces about Richardson Beach in today's Whig.

BEACH CLOSURES are the subject of front-page stories in both The Whig and Kingston This Week today.

Read them both.

Jim Keech, president of Utilities Kingston, must think we're all stupid.

He certainly knows that Osprey Media reporters are pushovers.

Here we have the City of Kingston bypassing over 7,000 cubic meters of sewage -- over 1.5 million imperial gallons -- into our local waterways all within the past 10-days and we're led to believe the e.coli fouling our beaches must be due to birds.

It gets worse: they aren't actually metering all the City's sewer bypass points.

And our mainstream media just parrots what these ass-covering municipal suits say.

For perspective, imagine 300 tanker trucks, each with 5,000 gallon capacity exactly like the one pictured here, lined-up taking turns pumping their full contents of sewage into the water. That's what 1.5 million gallons looks like. The equivalent of that happened this past week in Kingston, by the City of Kingston itself. And big-cheese Jim Keech says that e.coli has "...nothing to do with sewage" and "...the by-passes that we've had have been relatively insignificant".

Related:

• Pollution disclosure, City of Kingston-style from April 10 2008.
• Massive sewage dumping from April 4 2008.
• Past sewage overflow reports have been understated from September 21 2007.
• We need better sewer bypass accounting from November 21 2006.

THE SUMMER 2008 NEWSLETTER from Preserve Our Wrecks Kingston is available for download. Therein, among other things, is acknowledgement of the condiderable volunteer work done by the local dive community to the benefit of local tourism.

You'll also find information on the Kingston Underwater Event to be held August 8-10 at the Marine Museum and at City Hall. This is a showcase of Kingston's role as a premier freshwater dive location with a focus on diving, maritime heritage, conservation, and environmental issues.

GROUP SEEKS BEACH CLEANUP is front-page in The Whig today, about the awareness-raising Mass Swim planned for July 22nd at Richardson Beach.

It's amazing that it has come to this.

The decrepit state of Richardson Beach is plainly evident to anyone who cares to look, and the outcry over our neglected beaches was widely acknowledged in the last municipal election campaign.

AT COUNCIL THIS TUESDAY: a 5-year Crawford Wharf docking agreement with St. Lawrence Cruise Lines Inc, which includes their ticket booth, for $2,200/year.

St. Larence Cruise Lines has called Kingston home since 1982. The vessel in question is the M/V Canadian Empress, a 66 passenger replica steamboat built in 1981, pictured here.

GREAT RESULTS BY LOCAL ATHLETES:

• Will Crothers and Rob Gibson of Kingston helped Canada's under-23 men's eight win the Grand Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta in England.
• Robert Davis finishes fourth in the youth division and eighth in the Silver fleet in a very tough pre-Olympic Laser field at Kiel Week in Germany.
• Martin ten Hove won two gold medals and the Kingston Rowing Club claimed second place at the Eastern Rowing Championships at the Olympic Basin in Montreal.

THIS SUMMER'S MAJOR ONE-DESIGN CHAMPIONSHIP REGATTAS are as follows:

World Championships

Contender Worlds (CORK August 18 - 23)

North American Championships

29er (CORK August 16 - 20)

470 (CORK August 17 - 20)

Flying Dutchman (CORK August 21 - 24)

Canadian Championships

29er (KYC July 26-27)

Etchells (CORK August 7-10)

Contender (CORK August 16 - 17)

F18 (CORK August 21 - 24)

49er (CORK August 21 - 24)

Albacore (CORK September 19 - 21)

This is somewhat different than the list posted back on February 29th; then the Laser, Laser Radial, and Laser 4.7 North Americans were thought to be coming here, but end-up in San Fransico. Also in the interim, the 49er North Americans turned into the 49er Canadians.

The CITY OF KINGSTON BEACH REPORT continues to be a complete screwup.

Boys and girls, how hard is it to maintain a simple list, as inadequate as that is compared to the