By Sean Meyer/London Community News

There likely won’t be any clothing optional beaches popping up in Harris Park any time soon, but the Thames River Corridor could look very different over the next 15 years.

During the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee meeting on Monday (Jan. 9) councillors got their look at the Thames River Corridor Plan final report, a document that calls for enhancements up and down what project manager Bruce Page called “London’s most important natural, cultural recreational and aesthetic resource.”

The committee members unanimously voted to approve the corridor plan while also receiving the action plan designed to begin implementation of the report. Additionally, staff will be directed to initiate an Official Plan amendment while also calling for further study into issues such as water quality.

Page, who is also senior planner with parks, planning and design, laid out the plan to members of the committee, but only after statements from John Fleming, director of planning, and Andrew Macpherson, manager parks, planning and design.

Fleming called the corridor plan tremendous and something that will work to help promote “one of London’s treasures” an element that “factors significantly in the identity of the city.

Macpherson said the plan balances multiple interests; from environment to recreation to tourism and proposes enhancements to all those areas. The plan, Macpherson said, builds on priorities and current capital and operating budgets and doesn’t require any additional funding to get started on implementation in 2012.

Macpherson said many of the costs associated with the plan had been previously identified in both the city’s capital budget and capital forecasts. However, the price tag for the plan currently stands at approximately $15 million over the next 15 years.

Page said the goal of the corridor report is to protect and enhance the environmental features of the river valley and stemmed from back in 2000 when the Thames River was honoured with a national designation as a Canadian Heritage River.

“It was recognized from the outset that the success of the plan required input from the public to help guide the future of the corridor and recognize its rich history,” Page said. “A variety of opportunities were made available to the public to have their input, which generated issues ranging from improved natural heritage protection, to water quality to recreational needs.”

Page explained how public consultation was a key element of the plan’s creation. Through those discussions, Page said, it was agreed the Thames River valley is “a place of stories, a place of memories and a place London identifies with. It is many things to many people.”

Many of the ideas included in the initiatives, Page said, have already been undertaken by the city. However, there were a few new ideas, such as cafes along the Thames, installing beach volleyball courts and even the opening of a clothing optional beach.

Although that idea received near unanimous laughter from both councilors and city staff Fleming said it gives the city a place to start when developing the corridor.

“This is setting a plan, this is a framework, some guidance for us moving forward over the next 10, 20 years and it is pretty high level,” Fleming said. “When we get into specific development opportunities we certainly will get into a much higher level of detail.”

While the plan looks at components such as natural heritage protection, the building of new pathways, a focus on open spaces, land use guidelines, enhancements for the Forks of the Thames, development of adjacent urban lands and possible future land acquisitions.

However, while the report — and many members of the council — focused on projects surrounding the river,

Ward 4 Councillor Stephen Orser and Ward 5 Councillor Joni Baechler each pointed to the quality of the water in the Thames and what was going to be done about it.

“Are there any plans to do an actual aggressive pollution removal out of the Thames? A solid waste removal, for lack of a better term,” Orser said. “If we are going to go to the extent of making this a great asset for the city of London, wouldn’t it make sense to remove the shopping carts, the bikes, the tires, all the things that are found in the river?”

Baechler, who received support for her motion to have staff look into the cost and location of combined (sanitary and storm) sewers, said the issue of water quality cannot be looked at separately from the corridor’s future.

“We could spend a lot of money on a corridor, there are a lot of nice pictures of people in inner tubes going down the river, but the reality is that won’t be happening for a period of time in the City of London,” Baechler said. “We could really make this quite an incredible recreation area if the water quality was substantially better.”