Environmental groups are praising the Canadian government’s plan to spend billions of dollars to help Canadians reduce greenhouse gases. From Ottawa, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:
Transcript
Environmental groups are praising the Canadian government’s plan to spend billions of dollars to
help Canadians reduce greenhouse gases. From Ottawa, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly reports:
Four billion U.S. dollars will be spent on the environment over the next five years. That number
is part of the recently announced federal budget in Canada. And many say it’s a signal that
Canadian officials are taking their commitment to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change
seriously.
Much of the money will be spent on financial incentives for companies and individuals to reduce
their energy use.
The Sierra Club’s John Bennett says that’s a wise investment.
“This new system should be a way of spurring action much more quickly… and it will be open to
all comers to come forward with ideas to reduce emissions.
For instance, Canada plans to quadruple its investment in wind power. It has put aside 740
million dollars U.S. on incentives for those who build windmills – and for those who buy the
energy they produce.
People have depended on the locks of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway for decades. (Photo by David Sommerstein)
Paul Giometta normally helps ships in and out of the lock. But in the winter, he helps with repairs and maintenance. (Photo by David Sommerstein)
Construction during the winter is important to keeping the locks operational. (Photo by David Sommerstein)
The locks and channels for ships in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway are getting old. Some were built more than 75 years ago. The U.S. and Canada are conducting a multi-million dollar study to determine how to keep the aging waterway functional, so ships can continue to haul cargo between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. While the Seaway is closed in winter, workers empty the locks of their water for annual maintenance. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein climbed eight stories down to the bottom of one lock on the St. Lawrence River to see how it’s going:
Transcript
The locks and channels for ships in the Great Lakes
and St. Lawrence Seaway are getting old. Some were built more
than 75 years ago. The U.S. and Canada are conducting a multi-
million dollar study to determine how to keep the aging waterway
functional, so ships can continue to haul cargo between the Great
Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. While the Seaway is closed in winter,
workers empty the locks of their water for annual maintenance. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein climbed eight stories
down to the bottom of one lock on the St. Lawrence River to see how
it’s going:
If you’ve never seen a lock before, it’s basically a long, concrete channel filled with water. A freighter goes in one end. Gates close in front and behind it, so the water level can be raised or lowered to move the ship up or down, and out the other end.
Here, that channel’s empty and dry and you can see how huge this lock really is. I get a queasy feeling as I ease onto the steep metal stairs. I can see the lock floor 80 feet below me. Maintenance director Jesse Hinojosa radios down to the bottom. He says workers lose track of how often they climb the stairs.
“We should get a good count of that. They go up and down all day long on it.”
(sound of steps)
I take it step by step. There’s a temporary roof overhead. The only light comes from floodlamps.
The lock gates are open so they can be worked on, so at one end of the lock are stoplogs – stacked steel that temporarily keeps the river out. Still, some water rushes through and has to be pumped out.
(sound of water rushing)
Paul Giometta tops off the fuel tank of one of 10 furnaces that heat the area. He wears a fleece hat and big yellow boots. During the shipping season, he helps guide freighters’ in and out of the lock. But in the winter, he shifts to a totally different line of work.
Giometta: “Chipping concrete, stuff like that, painting, whatever has to be done.”
Sommerstein: “It’s an old lock, there’s a lot of chipping concrete.”
Giometta: “Oh, yeah, there’s no end to that. What you fix today, years later you start all over again.”
Winter maintenance has been an annual job on this lock since the Seaway system opened in 1959. The scale of the work is almost impossible to wrap your mind around. To raise or lower a freighter, the lock flushes 22 million gallons of water in just 7 minutes. It uses gears, valves, tunnels, and huge gates to accomplish the task. Most of that equipment is original, now almost 50 years old. Every winter, it all has to be checked out and tested. Some parts are replaced.
Tom Levine directs the Seaway’s engineering department. He points to the lock’s crumbling concrete walls. He says that’s one of the biggest problems.
“The bad stuff, where the bad concrete is, you take a hammer, it sounds like a hollow wall, and these walls where you’re looking at are like 60 feet into the backfill. I mean, solid concrete, I mean, you wouldn’t believe it.”
Albert Jacquez holds his hardhat and looks up at the walls. He’s the St. Lawrence Seaway’s U.S. Administrator, based in Washington. His demeanor is like that of a homeowner wincing at his rickety porch or rotting roof.
“Well, what I see is a system that has worked well for half a century, but that in the near future needs a major overhaul.”
There are 22 other locks in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway system. Most are owned by Canada. A binational study is underway to answer a critical question: how much will it cost to keep repairing all these locks and other infrastructure so they work for another 50 years? Jacquez says the answers the study finds could determine whether the Seaway gets a facelift or is left as is until it fails.
“Whatever those decisions are will be what they are, whether it’s ‘we’re gonna invest or we’re not gonna invest’, but they at least need the baseline numbers so that they know what they have ahead of them.”
But the study has been delayed. Lawmakers will have to wait at least a year longer than they expected because the project is so big. And President Bush has cut funding for the study in his budget plan by more than a half, which could delay it even further.
Meanwhile, keeping the Seaway open becomes more of a challenge every year. Jacquez says it’s like an old car.
“As it ages, we have to spend more and more time on it because we have more work to do.”
And workers face a hard deadline. Before spring shipping begins, where we’re standing will be flooded under 30 feet of water, so the lock can be ready to welcome the first freighter of the season.
President Bush is calling for more money to be put into the Great Lakes Legacy Act, but some wonder if it will be enough. (Photo courtesy of the Michigan DEQ)
President Bush is recommending more money for
a program designed to clean up contaminated sediment
around the Great Lakes. But the program has a track
record of not being fully funded. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
President Bush is recommending more money for a program designed to clean up contaminated sediment around the Great Lakes. But the program has a track record of not being fully funded. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
The President says he wants fifty-million dollars for the Great Lakes Legacy
Act, beginning this fall. But last year he asked for forty-five-million dollars and
Congress only granted half of that. It was the second year in a row that
Capitol Hill failed to fully fund the five year program.
Even if President Bush succeeds getting all the money he wants this year, EPA official Gary
Gulesian says it wouldn’t cover the fourteen projects waiting for federal dollars.
“So at this point we would not be able to fund all those projects assuming
they were all appropriate and we had the local matches in place.”
Environmental groups say they’re glad to see more money proposed for
sediment clean-up around the Great Lakes. But the groups say, overall, the
president’s budget makes significant cuts in other programs aimed at
cleaning up the nation’s water and air.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.
Overpopulation of deer is causing problems for forest
understory, farmers, and increased car/deer accidents.
Some programs are encouraging hunters to take an extra
deer and donating the meat to charity. (Photo by Lester Graham)
The hunting season for deer has ended or is about to end in most states. But the deer are still plentiful. Overpopulation of deer has led to an increase in deer-and-car crashes. Too many deer also damage the understory of forests. In some states, though, the deer overpopulation also means more deer meat is made available to low-income people. That’s because hunters, meat processors and food banks are working together to get venison to the poor. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Skye Rohde
reports:
Transcript
The hunting season for deer has ended or is about to end in most states. But the deer are
still plentiful. Overpopulation of deer has led to an increase in deer and car crashes. Too
many deer also damage the understory of forests. In some states, though, the deer
overpopulation also means more deer meat is made available to low-income people.
That’s because hunters, meat processors and food banks are working together to get
venison to the poor. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Skye Rohde reports:
It’s only been in the last decade or so that states have begun allowing hunters to donate
wild game to charitable organizations. In New York, meat processors and hunters started
the Venison Donation Coalition in 1998. Starting out, they gave a thousand pounds of
deer meat to food pantries in two counties.
Kathy Balbierer handles the coalition’s public relations. She says since that first thousand
pound donation, the program has grown…
“Last year, we had 108,000 pounds of venison donated, which on the average is, you
know – a deer is 40 pounds. It was approximately 27,000 deer. This year we have 119
participating processors throughout the state serving 52 counties.”
It’s an idea that hunters and meat processors across the nation are embracing. There are
venison donation programs in almost every state. Some, such as those in New York and
Illinois, are administered by state government. Others, like Michigan’s and Minnesota’s,
are run by private organizations.
Here’s how it works. First, a hunter who wants to donate meat takes it to a participating
processor. Ed Tanguey operates a meat processing facility in Kirkville, New York. He
says it’s a pretty simple process.
“Once the hunters show up to the building, we’ll have them come into our skinning room.
We’ll have them fill out some paperwork and once it’s brought in, we’ll start to skin the
deer, remove the hide and trim off any meat that’s not edible. We’ll bring the deer into
our cutting room.”
Butchers section the deer into shoulder, torso and hindquarters.
(sound of grinder starting up)
Then Tanguey sets up the grinder and grabs the meat from the cooler.
He packs the ground meat into five-pound black-and-white tubes and slaps a label on
with his name and the hunter’s license number on it.
Tanguey has processed 250 deer so far this season, 44 of them for the Venison Donation
Coalition. The coalition pays him a reduced rate, about a dollar a pound. Once there’s
enough meat in Tanguey’s cooler, he calls the Food Bank of Central New York to pick it
up.
Tanguey says this is his way of giving back to his community.
“When I see a hunter bringing in his son or grandson and they’re giving a second deer or
a third deer to the food bank, I think it’s going to pass it on to them. And years from now
we’ll keep the coalition supplied with some more food for the food bank.”
Jim Giacando is operations manager at the Food Bank of Central New York. He says
200 of the 600 agencies he works with ask for venison.
“In our freezer, we have almost 1,000 lbs ready to distribute, and it’s already committed
to a number of agencies throughout our 11-county area. And we’ll be distributing it this
week and next week, and then hopefully we’ll receive more in and fill more orders.”
The food bank will receive venison up until January. But Giacando says the greatest
challenge is keeping up with the demand for deer meat. A lot of people want it.
“I think we actually may have to get to a point where we might have to say ‘you know,
you can’t order that much. We have to keep it for all the other programs.'”
(ambient sound in church)
One of the food pantries asking for the deer meat is the University United Methodist
Church in Syracuse, New York. Norma Goel ordered venison from Giacando’s food
bank. The church’s food pantry feeds about 150 people every week.
Goel says she can’t buy as much food for the pantry as she’d like to because of the
church’s limited budget and an increase in the number of poor people asking for food.
She says farm-raised meat is a high-priced commodity…
“We’re always looking for a way to provide meat to participants in the pantry. And it’s
become increasingly difficult to buy frozen meat that the food bank has. By and large,
we’re not purchasing frozen meat from the food bank because we can’t afford it.”
So the deer meat is a cheaper alternative. Last year, Goel ordered venison too late to
receive any. This year she got all she could for the pantry: 60 pounds. She only has to
pay the handling costs – the coalition covers processing.
Goel says she’ll encourage people to use the deer meat in place of ground beef because
it’s high in protein and low in fat. She says the 60 pounds will feed a lot of hungry people
in her community.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Skye Rohde.
Sewers like these were leaking this spring in Milwaukee according to a task force employed by the mayor. He says fixing the problem may be expensive. (Photo by Bob Smith)
One of the biggest dumpers of raw sewage into the Great Lakes this year may be heading toward a solution that puts the cleanup burden on local citizens. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach explains:
Transcript
One of the biggest dumpers of raw sewage into the Great Lakes this year may be heading toward a solution that puts the clean-up burden on local citizens. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Several cities dumped sewage into the Great Lakes during heavy rains this spring and summer. Milwaukee’s overflow total was about five billion gallons. A task force set up by Milwaukee’s mayor concludes much of the problem came from rainwater leaking into the sewer system through illegal hookups and cracked pipes between homes and sewer mains. Mayor Tom Barrett says reducing the so-called infiltration and inflow, or, I and I, will be expensive.
“Well, we’re obviously going to have to put more dollars into I and I in Milwaukee. The city has done that, we’re doing more in this budget, we’re going to continue to do more… I think each of the communities is going to have to face that issue.”
The “communities” are the roughly 30 smaller cities that use the Milwaukee sewer system. Wisconsin’s attorney general is trying to ge the city and suburbs to work together. Milwaukee and many other Great Lakes cities are also asking the U.S. government to spend more money on reducing sewer overflows.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.
A new report says the nation’s beaches were closed a record number of times last year because of high bacteria levels in the water. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports:
Transcript
A new report says the nation’s beaches were closed a record number
of times last year because of high bacteria levels in the water. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports:
The Natural Resources Defense Council releases a beach report every
year. It’s based on data from the previous summer. The NRDC says,
last season, there were more than 18,000 closings or advisories –
that’s more than any summer in the past 14 years.
Nancy Stoner is with the NRDC. She says health officials are doing a
better job of testing beaches and that has lead to more beach closings.
Stoner says it’s good that more beaches are being tested… but she
says most communities are failing to control pollution sources.
“We know where the problem comes from and that’s contaminated
storm water and sewage. One of the big problems this year is that the
Clean Water State Revolving Fund has been slashed in the White
House budget. And Congress has not restored that funding.”
Stoner calls the funding critical for cities to repair aging sewer and
storm water systems. The NRDC is calling on Congress to restore the
cuts to the fund in the fall.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.
If you’re thinking of visiting a National Park this summer, you might notice there aren’t as many naturalist programs as usual, or you might notice some trail closings. Critics say the National Parks are woefully under funded, and they say the problem is getting worse. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports that park officials around the region are looking for ways to cut costs:
Transcript
If you’re thinking of visiting a National Park this summer, you might notice
there aren’t as many naturalist programs as usual, or you might notice some
trail closings. Critics say the National Parks are woefully under funded. And
they say the problem is getting worse. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Stephanie Hemphill reports that park officials around the region are looking for
ways to cut costs:
When he was running for president, George W. Bush promised to restore the
National Park System. But four years later, parks continue to deteriorate, and
some observers estimate it would cost $4 billion to make them healthy again.
Ron Tipton is with the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy
group. He says park managers are having to make tough choices.
“Are they going to have fewer law enforcement people, backcountry rangers,
interpretive programs, shorter hours, or even some days where the visitor
center’s not open – all of the above in some cases.”
Tipton says Congress mandates salary increases for park workers, but doesn’t
provide money to pay for them. That diverts money that should be used for
maintenance, hiring staff, and other programs; and when the nation goes to
Orange Alert, parks have to pay for the extra security.
Tipton says most parks in this region have less money now than they did two
years ago.
The Grand Portage National Monument is near the Canadian border with Minnesota.
Superintendent Tim Cochrane says the monument has been limping along without a
visitor center for nearly 50 years.
“That ought to tell you a little bit about funding levels and ability to provide
for fairly basic services at a National Park unit. There’s been under funding
for awhile; it certainly is more chronic now.”
Cochrane says as he loses staff, he relies more on volunteers to run the park
and explain the history to visitors.
At Voyageurs National Park, also along the Canadian border, officials are
working on a plan to manage the park on reduced funding for the next five years.
Deputy superintendent Kate Miller says they’ll use retirements to reduce staff
levels.
“It’s no secret I guess that those of us who are baby boomers are approaching
retirement age and that there will be some opportunities, service -wide, to find
some efficiencies and do some reorganization.”
Next year’s National Park Service budget won’t be decided until fall.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.
Environmental and consumer watchdogs have launched an all-out offensive against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a new report. They say the Corps wastes taxpayer money on unnecessary projects, including some in the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein has more:
Transcript
Environmental and consumer watchdogs have launched an all-out offensive against the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers in a new report. They say the Corps wastes taxpayer money on
unnecessary projects, including some in the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
David Sommerstein reports:
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has built some of the nation’s biggest marvels, from the
Hoover Dam to the St. Lawrence Seaway. But in recent years, the Corps has come under fire
from Congress and others for cooking the books to justify its own work. The latest charges come
in a report by the National Wildlife Federation and Taxpayers for Common Sense. The groups
identify 29 Corps projects they say gobble up federal money and destroy natural resources. Steve
Ellis is with Taxpayers for Common Sense. He says the agency must be reformed.
“In 2000, a huge scandal erupted on the upper Mississippi River that rocked the agency that
showed that they were manipulating data. We’re back debating this exact same project or a very
similar project now three years later. The Corps bears close observation and close watching.”
The groups also cite a St. Lawrence Seaway study they say is bent on wider and deeper channels
at a price of 15 billion dollars to taxpayers. Corps and Seaway officials say the study only looks
at the existing system, not expanding it.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.
Some low-income suburbs of major metropolitan areas are dumping grounds for used tires. But who’s dumping the tires continues to stump the authorities. In one state, authorities hauled off more than 40,000 used tires last year… and more keep showing up. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has this report:
Transcript
Some low-income suburbs of major metropolitan areas are dumping grounds for used tires. But
who’s dumping the tires continues to stump the authorities. In one state, authorities hauled off
more than 40-thousand used tires last year… and more keep showing up. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has this report:
Today’s job is a small one — inspectors from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
have been called in to remove about 3-thousand tires buried in an overgrown junkyard in a remote
corner of Blue Island, a suburb south of Chicago.
The state is paying for this clean-up, because tires are more than a nuisance, they’re a public
health problem.
This unpenned junkyard is overgrown with weeds and swarming with mosquitoes.
State EPA tire inspector George Skrobuton swats a big one from his elbow as he directs his crew.
“You’ve got all these tires here right now. They’re mixed between mattresses, garbage, clothes,
trash, leaves… See what they do is they get these tires out of the trees, the bushes, and the trash –
and they put them in a nice big pile, and they load the piles into the truck – it’s easier that way.
So, I mean, we’ll do the best we can, we’ll try to get every tire off the ground, if possible. And
hopefully, it’ll stay this way.”
The head of a back-hoe pushes aside a heap of garbage and its jaws close on a pile of almost a
dozen tires. Water streams from the knot of rubber as its lifted and dumped into an open semi
truck.
Skrobuton and his team have been called in to remove thousands of tires across the state, piles left
by rogue transporters who are paid to take them away, but pocket their fee instead of taking them
to be processed legally.
Some speculate the dumpers come from as far as Indiana to dump semi-truck-loads of the tires
under the cover of darkness.
Because these tires are on public land, Skrobuton’s team is cleaning them up for free as part of the
state EPA’s tire removal program.
But Skrobuton says this is a problem that just won’t go away.
“We can’t keep cleaning up these tire sites – it costs a lot of money. Y’know especially out here in
the south suburbs, I mean, there are so many forest preserves, and nooks and crannies like this,
that they could dump tires forever. And we don’t know where they’re coming from and that’s a
problem. Y’know, and unlesss they catch them in the act, we’re stuck with this problem.”
Over the last two years, dumpers left over 35-thousand tires in suburban Dixmoor.
With a population of less than 4-thousand, this poor suburb doesn’t have the money to remove the
tires… or fund a police force to keep the dumpers at bay.
So dumpers left their loads in alleys, vacant lots, even behind a school for years.
Village trustee Jerry Smith says the town was helpless until the state EPA came in and removed
all 18-truck-loads of tires last month.
“It’s just horrible, y’know – you go out there one day and it’s clear. And then you come back the
next day, you got 10,000 tires facing you. Well, what are you going to do with them? You can’t
pay the money to dispose them because you don’t have the money to dispose of them. There’s
nothing in our budget we got in there to dispose of tires what’s been dumped. So it’s just a burden
on us.”
But the state EPA’s Todd Marvel says the town had to move the tires because they’re a health
hazard.
He says the mounds of used tires draw more dumpers. And when tires catch fire, they produce a
toxic smoke, and Marvel says spraying water on them just makes things worse.
“So when that tire burns and you put that water on it, you’ve got a pretty contaminated run-off
there, a very oily run-off. And any surface water that’s in the area can be immediately
contaminated if that oily sheen is not contained properly.”
And, of course, there are mosquitoes. Marvel says each tire off its rim can breed thousands of
them, so these dumps are a breeding ground for West Nile.
Because of health concerns in the past, the state started a program to help get rid of these tires.
The state’s used tire clean-up program was created as a way to get the tires out of the state’s
junkyards, and into a useable industry.
People who purchase tires in Illinois pay a fee of $2.50 for each tire, new or used, which goes to
fund clean-ups and put back into the state’s used tire industry.
Most of the tires are shredded and mixed with coal to burn in power plants. Shredded tires can
also be used as the surface for everything from football fields to highways to playgrounds.
Marvel says the program has been so successful, Illinois’s demand for used tires actually exceeds
its generation rate.
“In fact, Illinois is a net importer of used tires. And the state of Illinois is constantly looking at
other markets and developing those markets to ensure that all of the used tires that we generate
and that all of the used tires that we clean-up through the dumps throughout the state have
someplace to go.”
But not all the tires end up where they’re supposed to go. Even though dumpers charge the fees
to process them properly, some of them steal the money and dump them in places such as
Dixmoor.
Dixmoor trustee Jerry Smith says once the tires show up in his town, they don’t have the money
to process them.
He says one company quoted him a price of $6 a tire. Multiply that by thousands.
So for now, he’s hoping the state EPA’s clean-up will last the town a long time.
Although the state EPA has offered Dixmoor support for added surveillance, Smith says a few
well-placed boulders and barricades seemed to do the trick.
Until last week, when 15 truck tires showed up in an alley.
Smith is cautiously optimistic this most recent find won’t multiply overnight.
“Let’s hope not. (laughs) I hope not. I really hope they don’t.”
But Dixmoor’s a small town and can’t afford a large enough police force to stop all the dumpers.
That means, chances are, abandoned tires will start showing up in back alleys and vacant lots
again soon.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.
A new environmental study has found toxic emissions increased in Canada during the late 1990’s, while pollution in the United States decreased over that same period. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, critics say the findings reflect the differences in the governments’ commitment to cleaning up the environment:
Transcript
A new environmental study has found that toxic emissions increased in Canada during the late 1990’s while pollution in the United States decreased over that same period. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, critics say the findings reflect the differences in the governments’ commitment to cleaning up the environment:
Between 1995 and 1999, the amount of toxic waste released into the environment by American manufacturers decreased by about seven
percent. However, in Canada, toxic releases increased by six percent. That’s according to a new study conducted by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation. It was established under the North American Free
Trade Agreement. The study compares industrial pollution in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, where the system is voluntary. Ken Olgivie is the executive director of Pollution Probe, an environmental group based in Toronto. He says the findings reflect the tightening of environmental regulations during the Clinton years. And the simultaneous
budget-cutting that was going on in Canada.
“When the U.S. is going down and we’re going up, I think that raises a serious question on Canadian policy and Americans should be aware of that because I’m sure you’re told all the time by our politicians how we do such wonderful things and we’re ahead of you, but I don’t think that’s true.”
For instance, the Ontario progressive conservatives cut their
environmental budget in half in 1995. Such cuts are significant because the regulation of air and water pollution in Canada lies with the provinces, rather than the federal government. That leads to different laws all across the country. An independent inquiry blamed the Ontario cutbacks for the deadly E. coli outbreak that occurred in the town of Walkerton in 2000.
The NAFTA report found Ontario had the largest increase in pollution of any state or province – at 19 percent. It remains the fourth largest polluter in North America and is the biggest recipient of American toxic waste. But it’s not the only place in the Great Lakes highlighted in the report. The study’s director, Erica Phipps says the region is responsible for a significant amount of North America’s pollution.
“Five Great Lakes jurisdictions, Ohio, Ontario, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, represent one quarter of the facilities and one quarter of the total releases that we’re looking at in this report…when we’re looking at the toxic releases and transfers coming from that region, it is certainly of concern.”
Phipps says that close to half of the landfill disposals of toxic waste occur in this region. Landfills in Ontario, Michigan and Ohio are the
biggest recipients. But at least one government is considering a change. Ontario’s new premier, Ernie Eves, is promising to pour new funding into the province’s environment ministry and tighten its enforcement.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.
