Tag: watershed management

Ocean Health Jeopardized by Midwest Pollution?

Two separate commissions are suggesting farm chemicals and pollution in rivers are the biggest threats to ocean health. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:

Transcript

Two separate commissions are suggesting farm chemicals and
pollution in rivers are the biggest threat to ocean health. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:

The privately funded Pew Oceans Commission and the U.S.
Government’s Commission on Ocean Policy are coming to the same
conclusion. They say issues such as agriculture runoff into
streams, rivers, and lakes are at the top of the list of threat
to ocean plant and animal life. Tom Kitsos is the director of
the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. He says the first step is to
change people’s approach to watershed management:


“I think this is a question of education
and public awareness of the watershed managers and watershed
councils that are prevalent in the Midwest, the farm associations
and individual farmers becoming aware that what they do on their
land affects our coasts and affects our oceans.”


The Commissions are recommending the government do more to stop
the kind of chemical usage that contributes to the problems in
oceans. Both reports will be sent to Congress for consideration.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.

Tainted Water Inquiry Calls for Major Changes

Recommendations have been made in the second and final report of an inquiry into the tainted water tragedy in Walkerton, Ontario. Seven people died and 2,300 became sick two years ago when E. coli bacteria leeched into the town’s drinking water supply from a nearby dairy farm. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports:

Transcript

Recommendations have been made in the second and final report of
an inquiry into the tainted water tragedy in Walkerton, Ontario. Seven people died and 2,300 became sick two years ago when E. coli bacteria leeched into the town’s drinking water supply from a nearby dairy farm. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports:


In his first report three months ago, the head of the Walkerton inquiry, Associate Chief Justice Dennis O’Connor, outlined what went
wrong and who was to blame. In his final report, O’Connor makes 93 recommendations aimed at preventing another tragedy like Walkerton. He provides a blue print for fixing the province’s water systems. That includes having the province spend 800-million dollars immediately to upgrade water systems, and beef up programs and policies designed for water protection. He says there should be a safe drinking water act, a separate drinking water branch as well as a watershed management branch both to be created within the environment ministry. And there must be tougher enforcement of water regulations for farms and municipalities.
Without that, O’Connor says the threats to safe water in the Great Lakes region will grow. If the recommendations are implemented, many people will be able to rest easier knowing that Ontario could be working on improved watershed protection. But that may be wishful thinking. Already the Ontario government is taking a “go slow” approach, mainly because of the money it might have to spend… almost four times as much as the environment ministry’s current budget. The next step, it says, is consultations with communities across the province.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Dan Karpenchuk.