Canadian Enviro Enforcement Criticized

An environmental lobby group in Canada says the Ontario Ministry of Environment watches industrial plants pollute the Great Lakes, but rarely enforces pollution laws. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has the details:

Transcript

An environmental lobby group in Canada says the Ontario Ministry of Environment watches industrial plants pollute the Great Lakes, but rarely enforces pollution laws. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


Between 1995 and 1999, polluters’ violated Ontario’s water pollution laws ten thousand times, but only eleven plants faced any penalties. Elaine McDonald is a staff scientist with the Sierra Legal Defense Fund, based in Toronto, which published a report on the findings. She says the problem started when the government cut the Ministry of Environment’s budget by about 40-percent:


“This resulted in lax enforcement in the field and– basically a policy of lax enforcement and therefore we saw this sudden increase in violations and very few charged being made.”


The Sierra Legal Defense Fund is calling on the Ontario government to crack down on Great Lakes polluters. The environmentalists say they do see signs of improvement, with more charges being filed in recent months against repeat pollution offenders. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lester Graham.