Dozens of representatives from various government levels and their agencies filled the Reach Street facility on May 8 when Scugog Township hosted its much-anticipated Lake Scugog Conference.

As the name suggests, the focus of the day-long summit was on Scugog's marquee natural landmark, a local "jewel" that underwent a trying 2007 that prompted the gathering. It was almost a year ago, during the memorable carp-kill, that sparked the need for such a conference. At that time, numerous levels of government and their associate agencies all acknowledged the problem of thousands of dead fish, but few had answers.

The 2007 wake-up call, said Scugog Mayor Marilyn Pearce, made the municipality, its residents and businesses "realize how fragile our economy and quality of life would be without that lake."

Fast-forward to Thursday, when officials from the federal, provincial and municipal tiers of government, as well as local conservation authorities, gathered to provide a comprehensive overview of what they do, and are responsible for.

The goal of the day was not to lay blame for the lake's woes, said Mayor Pearce, but to conjure up "the medicine needed to fix our ailing lake."

While taking a look back at 2007's carp-caper, Ministry of Natural Resources officials offered a new snippet of information regarding possible causes that may have lead to the death of thousands of the large fish in Lake Scugog.

No official, concrete explanation was ever given for the massive kill-off, however MNR officials hinted that the columnaris bacteria, believed to have played a role in the deaths, may have had an accomplice. On Thursday, the MNR's Tammy Tellier noted in her presentation that a federal laboratory had just recently pinpointed a new potential cause for the die-off.

Koi herpes virus, she said, is not harmful to humans, but has the potential to be deadly when mixed with carp, koi and goldfish. It's the first time that the viral bacteria has been discovered in Ontario, she added.

And, as a result of last year's kill-off, continued Ms. Tellier, the MNR has opted to introduce a series of new procedures and policies to deal with any future similar scenarios.

According to Ms. Tellier, there are now defined roles and responsibilities for agencies in case of a fish-kill sequel that will only be "implemented when there is a die-off due to fish health."

Other new regulations includes the creation of a hot-line for the public to call (1-866-929-0994); a form for call-takers to fill out, which will help direct the complaint to the correct agency; and an outreach co-ordinator to help deal with any scenarios. As well, the MNR has assurances that suspicious dead fish from all Kawartha Lakes will be rushed through the queues at testing facilities.

Also touching on changes prompted through problems arising from last summer was the Trent-Severn Waterway's Peter Frood. In the wake of last summer's admission by TSW officials that a communications breakdown was responsible for the federal agency leaving the Lindsay dam wide-open for weeks, leading to the draining of Lake Scugog, Mr. Frood outlined a number of new procedures.

Key among them are enhanced communications between Trent-Severn Waterway officials and interested agencies, said Mr. Frood. Other improvements include a review of TSW's operations department regarding water-level monitoring and reporting, the strengthening of capacity to provide supervision of TSW's operations and a commitment in the future to post online water-level charts.

"They're modest, many in some ways they're informal," Mr. Frood said of the changes.

But fixing the lake will take some time, noted Kawartha Conservation Authority's Mark Majchrowski.

"There are no good, short-term solutions, they're all long-term solutions," he said, referring to dealing with unruly weeds and high levels of phosphorous and nitrates in the water.

Educating the public and best practises for stormwater management in the "long-term are the key things," said Mr. Majchrowski.

But whatever decisions are made now, and in the future, the health of the lake must remain the focus, stressed Barbara Karthein, speaking on behalf of the Scugog Lake Stewards.

"We have to think about the lake and ground water with every single decision we make because water is the thing we need more than anything else," she said.