Rebirth of Water - 2017-2018

1.0 BACKGROUND
The Rebirth of Water project encompasses water quality monitoring in various watersheds
throughout the Greater Saint John Area. Originally, this project focused on the recovery of Marsh
Creek after the practice of dumping raw sewage into this watercourse was terminated in 2014; as
such, the Marsh Creek watershed is still the most heavily monitored watershed within this project
to continue this work. Since 2016, additional watersheds have been monitored to get a better
understanding of the state of the urban watersheds of the Greater Saint John Area. In 2017, five
different watercourses were added to the water quality monitoring program – Caledonia Brook,
Alder Brook, Saint John Inner Harbour (a historic ACAP Saint John site), Salmon Creek, and Mispec
River, which together with Marsh Creek, Hazen Creek [Red Head Marsh], Taylor Brook, and
Newman’s Brook, encompass a large portion of the Saint John region.
Figure 1.0: Monitored watersheds within the City of Saint John; missing from this map are the two
watersheds within Rothesay and Quispamsis – Taylor Brook and Salmon Creek. Belyea Brook and Bean
Brook depicted on this map were not monitored as part of the water quality monitoring program.
1.1 Marsh Creek Watershed
The Marsh Creek watershed is a ~4,200 hectare feature located in the eastern quadrant of Saint
John, New Brunswick, Canada, that drains directly into the Bay of Fundy (Figure 1.1). The
watershed consists of six primary watercourses, eighteen lakes and countless wetlands, including
a brackish semi-tidal wetland at its terminus. Marsh Creek, which served as a valuable natural asset
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