25 years later, Bayfront Beach is closed to swimming — with little hope of reopening

It's been 25 years since the city built Bayfront Beach, and a new report shows Hamilton might be better off just turning it into a wetland and giving up the swimming dream altogether.

After a year trying beach grooming, bird control and treating sand with hydrogen peroxide, the Hamilton Harbour beach is no safer for swimming, the report says.

And while the city will keep looking at ways to clean it up, it will also look at "converting the space to a wetland or for (other) recreational activities." 

"Without a solution to the blue green algae issue," the report says, "the study team is not recommending any further remedial efforts to restore the beach for swimming at this time."

It's a grim outcome for a beach the city created to encourage people to swim in the harbour as one of the final symbolic steps of the decades-long cleanup.

The city built the beach in 1993, a major part of the rehabilitation of the west harbour area for recreation. The area was first banned for swimming in the 1930s, and a 1950s Toronto urban planning professor called it "the world's largest and most beautiful septic tank."

In 1987, the International Joint Commission identified the harbour as one of 43 troubled areas, and an otherwise successful remedial action plan was born.

But despite other successes in the harbour cleanup, swimming remained an elusive goal. The city closed Bayfront Beach in 2016, and spent last year trying numerous ways to clean it up.

It tried ultrasound technology to reduce blue green algae blooms, which are a persistent health issue. It tried new methods to scare off birds. But even if Bayfront had been open last year, the report says, it only would have been swimmable less than a third of the time.

"Efforts to improve water quality failed," the report says. And "blue green algae continues to be a predominant factor in closing the harbour beaches to swimming."

The beach will stay closed for 2018, while the also problematic Pier 4 Beach will be open, but monitored. If Pier 4 Beach conditions don't improve, both beaches will likely be closed next year.

By comparison, Lake Ontario beaches were open at least 92 per cent of the time last year.