ACAPSJ is a Wonderful Source of Vigor

 

Inspiration Through Social Media

 I first encountered ACAP Saint John through Facebook. A friend of mine, who enjoys volunteer work, posted about the Marsh Creek Cleanup, in 2018. I saw it as an opportunity to get out of the how and make a meaningful impact. It was low-risk and high impact. I could get garbage out of an important waterway, and it took such a small time commitment. 

Things like that clean-up make it easy for people to get involved and feel like they are having an impact and that is what drew me to the organization in 2018. 

It's what draws me to them as a source of vigor again today.

Overview

According to the ACAP SJ website, they seek to create change by providing environmental solutions:

"Since 1992, ACAP Saint John has become known for partnering and working with the community to help provide solutions to existing and pending environmental problems." (ACAPSJ, 2022)

Programs

ACAP Saint John engages in a variety of projects

• Saint John Harbour Cleanup - 2014
• Water Testing - on-going
• Marsh Creek and Shoreline Cleanups- on-going
• Tree Planting - on-going
• Rain Gardens - on-going
• Erosion Prevention - future project in Redhead/Mispec Beach
• Dryer Microplastic Collection - on-going

The Interview

I reached out ACAP Saint John because I'd recently taken students to The Ville in Fredericton. It was a part of a climate action summit, organized by Learning for a Sustainable Future. The students and I received a $500 climate action project grant, and we were deciding what to do with it.

For that reason, we reached out to ACAP for direction, and as a result I was inspired by their work all over again. What follows in an interview with their Climate Change Coordinator - Jamylynn MacDonald.

You have had an interesting education – paleoclimate reconstruction in Canadian permafrost, air quality and VOCS at oil refineries, and a masters of climate change from University of Waterloo. What drew you to ACAP?

Yeah, I do.

I actually moved out to Saint John in 2019 when I was doing my masters in climate change from the University of Waterloo.

I grew up in Ontario. And then I worked in the environmental field after my undergrad for a while, decided I wanted to learn a bit more, saw that program, which was relatively new at University of Waterloo. I joined that and ended up coming out here, which I really loved, so I stuck around and kept working here at ACAP.

 

As the Climate change coordinator, what does your average day look like?

It varies. There is quite a large component that we do in office.

There's a lot of project coordination that's involved in this job, emailing, resourcing, researching.

A lot of that, we tried to do in the winter so that when we have the nicer weather we can complete our field projects which include the monitoring of whatever projects we get that year.

We work off of the funding cycle where we apply for grants around this time of year. We've been doing a lot of that. And then when we find out what we get, we make the plan of how to do it, how we're going to get it all done.

So, right now it's a lot of office work.

It’s really different than in the summer when we're in the office for 5 minutes in the morning, out in the field for the rest of the day back just to check in and then home.

It's dynamic, which is a good thing because it can get stagnant to always have a repetitive workday.

I’m looking at Sustainability through my master’s program and I’ve volunteered with ACAP a little in the past, and I am wondering what ways you see ACAP tackling issues of sustainability in our region

ACAPSJ has been around for 30 years, always focusing on getting community members out, doing cleanups, but also getting hands on doing water quality monitoring. [We have focused on] teaching people how to use different test kits that they can use like a little kind of similar to what you would use to test the water in a pool but looking at the parameters that are important for ecosystem health.

So that was a big part of when ACAP first was founded in the early 90s. Then it transitioned away as the capacity of the organization to be able to do the water quality monitoring themselves.

 

[Now] we do a lot of cleanups. We do a lot of tree plantings. We've been doing a lot of climate change gardens and stormwater retention types of projects where we get people out and involved in those.

And then for our climate change work, we're just finishing up a project all about natural assets. [We are] looking at how nature in Saint John is a huge asset to the city and how they need to be more sustainable when thinking about development and how they can use these assets to really make a better space, but also to make it easier for them like.

Also, this year we're wrapping up our fish and harbor monitoring. We will be writing up a final report that covers all of the species we found this year.

We're finishing up a project on micro-plastics this year where we looked at how to remove microplastics from people's clothing by using a filter that goes on your laundry machine. We had citizen scientists participate where they took one of these filters, attached it and then they've been collecting their microplastic, so it prevents them from going out into the sewer.

 

What are some key challenges that you face in making change in this region?

I think funding is definitely one of them. But financial capacity is a barrier for so many things that it's hard to just say it's only here.

We're fortunate we have a lot of support from the city.

I think some of the challenges that we deal with are around water quality. That's one of the big focuses of ACAP, St. John.

We’ve worked really hard to improve water and water quality in the harbor. And since the harbor cleanup in 2014, it kind of just was like “OK, it's better now.”

One of the challenges that we're facing in that aspect is it's not really better now, but it's improved. But there's more to do.

I think it's just maybe that mindset [the community has that] there's no urgency with environmental issues unless it's, you know, as bad as it was back when the raw sewage was [pouring into the harbour].

I go out to these coastal sites and see the erosion and there's not a lot of urgency there to take action. But it is a topic that needs to be at the front of every conversation about development in protection and infrastructure management.

My personal challenge is that urgency, but I think we all struggle with that. We're trying to get people’s attention on these issues. But it's so hard sometimes because it's not right now.  A lot of the time we're talking 50 years [when] sea level is going to be half a meter higher and that is not now, but that's coming very soon. Trying to press that urgency is one of the biggest challenges that we have.

Also, there are people who aren’t as passionate about environmental issues and sustainability, so that's a big [challenge] too.

We need to work with people whose priority isn't reducing their carbon footprint. A lot of people in this city are not looking at how they can minimize their energy usage. They're just trying to figure out how they're going to pay their bills. Those things go hand in hand.

 

Where do you go from here? What is the plan going forward?

We have an opportunity to apply for some funding that's federal, that's not focused on the Wolastoq river. We're going to be trying to hopefully get some money to do some work in a different part of the city over on the east side in through Redhead and out by Mispec Beach. [There are] a lot of streams and a lot of waterways through there. That's the kind of work that we are hoping to do.

 

I teach grade 9 students who are looking to use a $500 climate action project grant, what are some ways they could use $500 to make a meaningful impact? We’d considered trying to build a greenhouse or implement composting at the school. Even getting more bike racks to encourage active transportation. But $500 doesn’t go very far and some of these projects require long-term commitments, do you have any suggestions?

We do work with high schools [and] at the high school level is where we do need to target more of our energy, and I think maybe starting with the presentation of something we can do over the winter.

[Having that presentation, to get the ball rolling] would be a good way to get them familiar with ACAP a bit more and then we could look at even doing something next year.

[We could look at] getting them involved to do a tree planting, whether it's on the school property, if they want to do a type of like rain garden or like one of these gardens that's retaining storm water, getting them to do those kind of things is a really great way to get them out.

Next Steps

The conversations we had were great. Following this interview we connected about doing some work with my students, encouraging them to get involved in climate action, and finding a way to use our $500 in a meaningful way for our community.

I'm looking forward to following up with ACAPSJ and finding a way to show my students that we can make a difference to the world around us. We can take action to help our communities and fight climate change. 

I'm feeling envigorated!

References

ACAP Saint John. (n.d.).What we do, Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://www.acapsj.org/what-we-do

Mulligan, M. (2017). Chapter 11. In An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, social and personal perspective (pp. 173-187).
            Routledge. 

Roorda, N. (2012). Chapter 2. In Fundamentals of Sustainable Development (pp. 37–77). essay,                 Routledge.