This is a group that we have connected with in Eastern Canada. They also produce a weekly update which you may wish to sign onto as well. Their main objective is to monitor what is happening with the Great lakes and currently in particluar, Lake Ontario. It is a very sad picture this group paints and as the say in one part of their weekly, the loss of memory of what things were once like is the biggest enemy.For those of us with vivid memories...it is important to log what we saw in time past, and now what we see. It is then important to transmit that information to others.
I am posting their entire newsletter for this past week to hopefully entice you to pay their site a visit as well.
Today, Monday, December 10, 2007, Lake Ontario Waterkeeper submitted our recommendations for revitalizing and protecting the Oshawa Harbour to David Crombie. The federal government appointed Crombie to sort through conflicting visions for the Oshawa Harbour in September 2007. Crombie has a wealth of experience navigating through complex water issues.
Waterkeeper's recommendations include an array of governance structure reforms that aim to provide the authority, resources, and accountability needed to protect and develop the Harbour in the public interest for now and into the future.
We are currently at the the end of an era and Crombie's appointment cannot come at a better time. Prior to European colonization, the Great Lakes were some of the most vital, naturally abundant waterways on the planet. Over the last three centuries, the lakes and the land around them have been stripped of natural resources: trees, soil, minerals, fish, fowl and more. In the last century, the Great Lakes saw rapid industrialization that replaced the lakes' natural assets with man-made problems such as persistent toxins in water, sediment, and wildlife.
Lake Ontario, perhaps more than any other Great Lake, is in peril. From Durham to Hamilton, nearly all coastal wetlands are gone. Stocking programs keep fish in the lake because natural reproductive cycles are failing. Water quality problems worsen year after year resulting in drinking water advisories, beach postings, and new infrastructure pressures.
Navigation and fishing, two of the oldest rights known to humans, are both threatened in the Oshawa Harbour. For centuries, every person has had a right to travel via the water. In 2003, that right was taken away from the people of Oshawa. Similarly, every person has had a right to take fish from the waters and feed his or her family. Without access to the shoreline, moorings for fishing vessels, clean water, or fish habitat, the age-old right to fish has been lost.
Lake Ontario has so few wild places and so little of its wealth left. If government does not choose to protect and restore the Oshawa Harbour, it will choose to condemn forever an entire bay, the mouths of two rivers, centuries of history, and one rare, remaining haven.
Pressures from the shipping industry and commercial interests will further competition over the Harbour in the foreseeable future, adding to the urgency for action from all levels of government.
Finally, Waterkeeper's recommendations come at a time when we know and appreciate more about the environmental and socio-economic value of clean waterfronts today than in recent years. Particularly with regard to the need for increased conservation, the desire tax revenues associated with real estate development, and a desire to eliminate toxins. In many ways, this knowledge contributes to a kind of "waterfront renaissance" taking place in several Lake Ontario communities (indeed, several communities around the globe).
At the same time, with each day that passes, there are fewer individuals and fewer organizations left who remember the Great Lakes as they once were: clean, plentiful. One of the greatest threats to Great Lakes restoration is the loss of memory, a kind of acceptance of a status quo that includes contaminated sediments, polluted beaches, fish consumption advisories and so on. If the next generation is not taught what "clean" is, contaminated areas like the Oshawa Harbour will never recover.
Oshawa Harbour needs a new governance structure, one with the authority and the resources to protect and develop the Harbour for the public interest well into the future. Waterkeeper proposes that an effective, responsive governance structure should include the following elements:
1. Guaranteed minimum protections of the Harbour's natural assets
2. A governance structure with a public interest mandate
3. A governance structure with expertise and resources
4. A multi-stakeholder governance structure
5. A governance structure with accountability
6. A governance structure with powers
7. A governance structure with obligations
8. Guaranteed funding
To read Waterkeeper's entire submission to David Crombie, click HERE.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------This week on Living at the Barricades hosts Mark Mattson and Krystyn Tully discuss public access to waterfronts and the future of the Oshawa Harbour.
Click here to listen to the show (right-click to download).
Subscribe to the Living at the Barricades Podcast via iTunes.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------At the Barricades: Volume 1, Lake Ontario Waterkeeper's newly released music compilation produced by Chris Brown and featuring tracks from an all-star lineup of independent artists is now availalbe on iTunes! Individual tracks can be purchased for $0.99 each and the full album for $9.99.
Click here to find the album at the iTunes store.
Read recent reviews of At the Barricades from Now Magazine, Exclaim, Pitchfork Media, York Excalibur, and The Queen's Journal at
www.waterkeeper.ca/barricades.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------Waterkeeper.ca Weekly:
Waterkeeper.ca Weekly reflects the meaning and force of environmental justice on Lake Ontario. To contact the editor, please e-mail newswaterkeeper.ca. Lake Ontario Waterkeeper is a charitable organization, no. 86262 2750 RR0001. Please consider making a donation to support our work.