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Quebec City, Quebec, November 8, 2005

Key points presented at the public meeting

• The review should take into account new problems facing the Great Lakes, including climate change and non-indigenous aquatic invasive species.
  
  
• There should be an ecosystem approach embracing water, air, and land.
  
  
• Water quantity should be taken into account in the Review, not just water quality.
  
  
• Governments should seek to maintain a balance between uses and needs upstream and downstream when periods of low water levels occur.
  
  
• There should be even more public consultation on IJC working groups and advisory boards.
  
  
• The IJC should help in establishing a network between the areas of concern, the LAMPs, the RAPs, the ZIP committees, conservation authorities, universities, and cities.
  
  
• The GLWQA needs more focus on the cumulative impacts on water quality.
  
  
• There should be a Web site where people could access data, ask questions, and identify emerging problems so that there could be a more pro-active approach.
  
  
• There are concerns about more water being diverted from the St. Lawrence River basin into the Mississippi River basin, and that this diversion could also pose a problem in terms of aquatic invasive species such as the Asian carp.
  
  
• We should strive to have the Great Lakes return to an oligotrophic state.
  
  
• The concentration of phosphorus in Lake Erie is a problem, as well as the return of cyano-bacteria.
  
  
• There needs to be monitoring of the Lakes and its tributaries for nutrients not only during the summer months, but during the winter months as well in order to gauge the problem accurately.
  
  
• There needs to be more of an ecosystem approach in monitoring water quality, not just a focus on fish health.
  
  
• There needs to be a war declared on non-indigenous species, and there needs to be more than an electrical barrier to these.
  
  
• There are concerns that the allowable concentration of lead under the GLQWA is not the same in all of the Great Lakes.
  
  
• There must be more monitoring of the levels of pollutants and more efforts to decrease pollution in the Lakes.
  
  
• There are concerns about the cumulative effects of pollution that may still be under allowable levels and concentrations.
  
  
• More should be done about pollution coming from municipalities whose wastewater goes into the St. Lawrence River.
  
  
• There should be coordination of policies on water quality and water quantity, notably between the IJC and the Council of Great Lakes Governors and premiers of Quebec and Ontario.
  
  
• The precautionary principle must be retained.

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