PUBLIC MEETING -- PART 3
Jim Chandler, U.S. Secretary, IJC
Thank you Commissioner Bayh. As we did yesterday, we are going to announce four speakers at a time. This will allow everyone an opportunity to get up to the microphones and as the Commissioner said, there are lots of people who want to speak, many wanted to speak yesterday. We will hold up a sign when there is one minute left and hopefully we won't have to put up the second when there's no time left. First, will be Dan Emerton, followed by Ken Bondy, Ziggy Kleinau and Susanne Schulte.
Dan Emerton, United Autoworkers
My name is Dan Emerton and I am here representing the United Autoworkers. I appreciate the opportunity to speak. I hope my message will provide you with some useful information, facts that call all of us to recommit to environmental priorities. I hope that more American and Canadian companies will discover how proactive environmental positions can help companies stay competitive while still ensuring reasonable profits. When labour and management work together to go beyond compliance with environmental regulations, they experience improved employee morale, higher productivity, less days of work lost, lower turnover rates and lower workman compensation claims. Additionally, these responsible environmental positions help protect companies against expensive lawsuits over unhealthy or dangerous conditions in plants. Proactive corporate environmentalism isn't just good public relations, it can be proven that it is good business.
Integrating positive proactive environmental thinking into the corporate process can produce new opportunities for companies and labour. Beyond that, it is essential for survival. Companies that have vision incorporate the right environmental values into their planning process will carve out a greater market share. The companies that do not change their way of thinking about environmental compliance will not be in business longterm.
With that said, I would like to talk about a growing trend that concerns me, not necessarily for myself but for the impact this issue will have on our community, our children and the future of both our countries. The issue I am speaking of is job blackmail. Corporations have learned very well how to threaten the livelihood of millions of workers by implying that the cost of doing business in certain areas prohibits them from committing to these areas longterm. Whether the costs are EPA environmental regulations or health care costs is really irrelevant. There will always be some place cheaper in the short term to relocate business. The question is at what cost? Underdeveloped countries may have lower labour costs but the health of these workers are just as important as any other. Companies can relocate to areas with less regulation. More and more people than ever before understand the value of protecting our government and the people in it. Be sure of one thing, wherever corporations relocate, advocates for environmental justice will follow.
The problem seems to be that many companies seem to see environmental regulation as hostile demands made from industry outsiders. Environmental controls and increasing public awareness are here to stay. Companies that are able to adapt to this task are far more likely to meet the challenges of doing business in the 21st Century.
In summary, it is time to end the battle over the environment by government, industry and labour, and adopt a position that collectively can achieve a better environment for this planet. Not because we have to, but it is the right thing to do. Thank you.
Ken Bondy, Canadian Autoworkers, Windsor
Good afternoon, my name is Ken Bondy. I am the chairperson of Canadian Autoworkers, Windsor Regional Environment Council representing approximately 35,000 autoworkers that live in and around the Lake Erie/Detroit River and Lake St. Clair area. I am here today to, first of all, to say thank the Commissioners on behalf of all of the Canadian Autoworkers from coast to coast for allowing labour's voice at these proceedings.
Yesterday and earlier this morning, I heard facts and figures that describe the positive gains that have been made on environmental remediation. But still, that is not enough. There are still a large contingent of government and industrial representatives that just don't get it. When are these people going to realize that our environment is the determinant of our health??!! Government and industry have the means to increase the gains that we heard these last few days by two, three or four fold. But there are those that continue to hide their heads in the sand or even worse, outright lie about their commitment to the environment and consequently, to our health.
Let me give you a couple of examples of this ostrich phenomena. On December 16th, 1996, the Canadian Autoworkers across Ontario representing 143,000 people lost a campaign entitled "Environmental Deregulation is a Recipe for Cancer." We have facts and literally thousands of letters to the Ontario Environment Minister, but unfortunately, he is not listening. As we stand and watch over 80 regulations being put up for review with the thought that regulations inhibit business. Seven-hundred and twenty-five Ontario Environment Minister's staff have been laid off. I sat in on a meeting on Friday and heard an industrial representative deny the facts that the persistent toxic substances in our environment are not having a detrimental or negative effect on our health. Who are they trying to kid?
Today in Canada, one in every three Canadians will have some form of Cancer to fight in their lifetime. One in five will die. We cannot continue to buy the logic that this is all due to hereditary or lifestyle conditions. We know that pollution causes cancer. What we need is a recommitment from government and industry on our environment and our health.
I will conclude by speaking of two recommendations for the Commissioners:
I have a document here that I will leave on your table that will explain this further. Thank you.
Ziggy Kleinau, citizen and member of Great Lakes United
Thank you. My name is Ziggy Kleinau. I am a new member on the Board of Great Lakes United, and also represent citizens for renewable energy.
Radionuclides, a persistent toxic substance in the Great Lakes. There was quite a discovery about four years ago and it was long overdue. I was deeply humbled by the presentation of the young people that pled for their sustainable future. What a legacy we have left them. Really, we never pay off the debts in our generation. That's the creeping radiation that causes genetical effects over centuries.
The Nuclear Task Force of the IJC is assessing the sources. The undisputed, largest source comes from nuclear reactors. Tritium in biota in fish and drinking water; I found it very upsetting that in the Priorities document for the next two year, the nuclear effort is listed as No. 7; that's a lower part of the medium priority. It has to be shifted up to a high priority.
Virtual elimination is only possible if the nuclear plants are phased out at a much accelerated pace. If you say where's the electricity going to come from? We have conservation and renewable options which are ready to replace the energy lost in a very short time.
I want to give you a little example. Wind power, for instance, they have 28,000 megawatts in Canada as a possible replacement. We have fuel energy efficiency of 10,000 megawatts; it's just unbelievable what kind of natural resources we have in the renewables. There have been enough assessments, monitoring after 25 years in the Great Lakes. The honeymoon is over. We need action now. We want clean water now.
Hello, my name is Susanne Schulte. I am a concerned student from Riviere High School in Ohio. I would like to talk about some aspects from history that I am sure we have all known and heard before but I believe we need to remember now.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Lake Erie was considered dead and the Cuyahoga River caught fire almost every summer. Decaying fish, raw sewage and beach closings were the norm, but the government and the people didn't say anything. In 1962, Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring." In it, she warned that chlorinated pesticides could pollute human tissues, but she was called hysterical and over-emotional because of this. The government didn't listen and the chemical industry expanded the use of pesticides. In 1964, Carson died of breast cancer. In 1984, the first stated confirming the connection between pollution and human injury was given to us through Dr. Sander and Joseph Jacobson at Wayne State University. They conducted an experiment which included a control group of expectant mothers who ate no fish and an experimental group of expectant mothers who ate Lake Michigan fish regularly. The results showed that the experimental group's children were born earlier and smaller and as they matured, showed impaired neurological development.
In 1991, research done on 14 species from the Great Lakes region all showed population declines, as well as reproductive and hormonal disorders. These disorders showed up in the offspring, not the adult and are believed to have stemmed from pollution buildup in the foodchain. Research has concluded that a growing body of evidence suggested that exposure to synthetic chemicals in the environment cause endocrine disruption, rising rates of breast cancer and endometriosis, increased reproductive problem in males and females, and compromised immune systems.
In 1995, Radiation and Breast Cancer, the High Cost of Living Near Reactors gave us the hypothesis that stated that emissions from nuclear reactors directly contribute to the increase in breast cancer cases. Two other factors were introduced to us in 1995, the first was a proposal to use weapon-grade plutonium in commercial reactors which could potentially spread deadly contamination throughout the Great Lakes. The other was research showing increased deterioration of Ontario's hydro units on Lake Huron and Lake Ontario which could spill very large quantities of tritium-laced water.
In closing, all of this evidence points to one thing, the fact that the pollution from the past and current generations are causing serious health matters now. The governments of Canada and the U.S. have come a long way in the journey for pollution control, but we are far from arriving at our destination. That destination being "zero discharge." We have all seen the report cards on the governments and even the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, itself. The fact is the governments aren't doing their homework and therefore are failing to meet the objectives.
Sometimes I sit and think about sending the government back to school so they can all learn how to listen once again. Not political listening where they forget five minutes later, but actual listening and comprehension so they can finally hear what we have been yelling at them over the years. Protect our Great Lakes. Protect our health and protect our future.
Hello, I am Nicky Marsh. I come from a place where our river, the Cuyahoga River burned. Today, it no longer catches fire and 25 miles of it are classified as a scenic waterway. We no longer believe that the solution to pollution is dilution. If such progress can be made on a river that burned, we can certainly reach the goal of zero discharge on the Great Lakes.
Nearly 75% of the earth is covered by water. Three percent of that water is fresh water and only 1% of that water is available to us for drinking. Water, water everywhere, not a drop to drink! The Fifth Biennial International Joint Commission meeting called for the governments to produce a binational program that would decrease the use of chemicals found in the Great Lakes environment. The governments agreed with the Commission's positions that persistent toxins hurt wildlife and fish, and may cause injury to mothers and their babies after consumption of fish from Lake Michigan, and that persistent toxins are a threat to human health, wildlife, aquatic health and the entire ecosystem.
Amendments made to the GLWQA state that the goals of the Agreement should be to protect human health, and conservation and protection of the living aquatic resources and to further ensure ecosystem protection. After all of these goals and positions taken by the governments and the IJC are put out by the IJC says [sic] ". . . the levels of persistent toxins in fish are still at unacceptable levels." I don't want to tell my children how great the Great Lakes were, I want to show them. I want them to be able to swim in the rivers and lake, and eat the fish.
With the remaining persistent toxins the Great Lakes bloodstream and talks of regulations being pushed back, allowing for more of these toxins to go in, I don't see that happening. I am willing to work hard for the future, but the question is, are the governments?
I look out into the audience now and I don't see any of the government officials who gave such powerful speeches about listening to the citizens yesterday. Well, the public, the citizens, the future is talking now. And where are the governments? We listened to you. How and why aren't you here now?
I'll close by quoting the preamble that said what " . . . our generation has failed to realize is that what we are doing to the Great Lakes, we are doing to ourselves and our future." Thank you very much.
Judy Pratt-Shelley, Tribal member and representative of Lake Superior Ojibway
Hi, thanks for hearing me. You might have to cut me off at three minutes. I might not notice your sign.
This is my daughter Eva. I got to talk to Alice in Duluth when I was carrying Eva about my concern about toxins. I got to see Susan in the hall. She has two, two-year olds also. This is all about children and our future.
For me, as a resource manager with a background in biophysical environmental studies, I understand these toxic issues. However, that doesn't help me change things. All that does is inflict fear in me, in my life. I nursed my son four years ago, and I am nursing my daughter right now. There are toxins in my breast milk and I know that. However, I will not stop breastfeeding my children. There's are also other good things in my breast milk.
I am also well aware of the fish advisories. I live in the Lake Superior basin, right on Lake Superior. As a tribal member and a representative of Lake Superior Ojibway, we have rights retained and treaties signed with the U.S. Government where we retain rights to hunt, fish and gather in a user-fiduciary of the resources that we had before the United States and Canada were here. In exercising my rights, I don't want to be giving toxins to my children through the consumption of the food that I have every right to eat, three meals a day, every day of the week, if I want to. However, I am limited in the number of fish I can eat, the size and species of fish. I will not stop eating fish. What needs to be done is not to advise me on what I should not eat, but rather get rid of the toxins in the environment so I can meaningfully exercise my rights that were guaranteed in treaties signed by the United States government.
We preceded any of the states around Lake Superior and these governments are failing terribly on the binational program. It has taken us five years of fighting to even get representation on the Lake Superior Task Force and Lake Superior Workgroup. When I emotionally said how I felt about toxins in my foodchain, that I am passing on to my baby, Chuck Ladine, the chairman of the Lake Superior Workgroup said that I was not unique. Well I am unique but I am not going to waste my breath telling him that I am unique, because he can't hear me. And, he's not here anymore at the IJC meetings to even listen. We fought to get there and now we're there. Now, we need someone to listen. This is the reason why things don't change, because they are trying to keep things the same so bad.
Recommendations real quick, I've seen the one-minute sign. Get Haudenosaunee people on the IJC or I suggest the binational joint commission. Look to other countries, we were wonderfully welcomed in Sweden by the Green Party. Now they are having to deal with toxic issues that are really from the birth of many here in the European countries. Take a look at the Baltic Sea. They have pollutants all over because we value money more than resources and people. It's going to kill all of us. Money we can't eat and it's not going to build us a very big fire when we need it to protect us, it will fail us miserably. Confederate money is worthless. We cannot only rely on money. When I manage resources for our tribe, I need to look seven generations in the future and I see the 'zero' sign.
Seven generations ago, the contaminants that your forefathers put into Lake Superior are just getting into Lake Michigan. When will it reach Niagara Falls? Way more than seven generations. Let's start looking at resource management in a timespan of at least seven generations -- 200 years.
The last message I will give you is from my chairperson. Please, please, please start looking at local issues. Local issues today are the big issues basinwide tomorrow. In Lake Superior, they are salvaging lumber that sunk 150 years ago and it may be a local issue in the Shawanigan Bay now, but it's going to spread. What they are doing is beyond taking away the value and the habitat for the fish, they are removing the biological reinvestment that's the very bottom of the foodchain for the future. Please look at local issues. Look at those little red dots all over that map, because that's where the issues that are local that are killing the Great Lakes basin.
Please, if you can't do it for me, do it for my beautiful daughter, Eva. Her name, because I am a Lake Superior Ojibwa on my mother's side and French-Canadian on my father's side whose family immigrated from Sweden and Germany. My babies name, Eva is named after my grandmother and she is the giver of life. When she nurses her baby, please, less toxins, because we can't stop doing these things or we lose our way of life, and we won't do that. Thank you for hearing me.
Hello, I am Elaine Marsh and I will be brief. My chief concern, in addition to all of those stated over the last two days, is that we be here in two years and that we be expanded and that some of those people that we are supposed to partnering with in order to implement these stakeholder operations which many of us are involved in, that they be here as well. I deeply hope that will happen.
I also hope that when we come back in two years, your recommendation involving economics will be fully implemented. I served on the Ohio EPA external advisory committee for the implementation of the Great Lakes Initiative. And, we were told that for the first time ever, we were going to have a cost-benefit analysis that in fact, included benefits. So we had a cost-side analysis, the old cost-efficiency, you know that huge formula that takes about 256 megs of RAM in order to implement, and looks at the costs of everything, including the effects on the cost of paperclips in Bangladesh. What we got on the benefit side were about six pages of words. We asked whether there were any cost savings in cancer effects? Well, yes, but there are no protocol to calculate that. We have no way of translating the number of cancers. So I really hope that you would look at that seriously because the protocol, although they do exist in various places, are not acceptable. We need someone with the stature of the IJC to utilize such a protocol so that it gets into the cost-benefit analysis.
One other thing that I would suggest is that you take video tapes of one of these student presentations, and that you give them both to the EPA and Environment Canada. You make them required watching for all permit holders who wish to discharge harmful substances into the environment. Perhaps that would remind them that they have responsibilities larger than simply saving tax dollars and increasing shareholder profits. Also, it would remind them that when old ladies like me go away, that there will be young people to take our place. We will not go away and we will not shut up.
Martin Visnosky, citizen, Erie, Pennsylvania
Good afternoon Commissioners. Thank you for allowing me to speak. I am Martin Visnosky from Erie, Pennsylvania and I am here talking for myself, unaffiliated, although I am affiliated with many groups.
I am going to be real brief because I think everything has been said and it has been said at the four Biennials that I have been to before this. We're pissed! This goes on and on and on and on. I hear Theo Colborn once again give a presentation about endocrine disruptors and transgenerational effects. I hear my First Nation and native American brothers get up and once again tell us how they are not getting any justice in the lands that they first inhabited. I hear my colleagues and friends in the audience come up time and time again and say the same things. The governments, the Parties to this Agreement apparently are deaf. All your good efforts and your predecessors' good efforts are falling on deaf ears.
I watched as the pulp and paper cluster role, which this year, was passed on by EPA become a joke. There's no phase-out of chlorine going on. They've legitimized the use of chlorine dioxide which still produces dioxins. I watched the Clean Air Act debacle in the United States -- greater than $10-million spent by industry -- once again, it just happens to be air this time, calling good science and good health recommendations bull. Calling it 'bad science.' I can't take it anymore. I think many people in this audience have expressed that very same thing. They've been coming to these Biennials way longer than I have. We have just had it.
Walter Bresette perhaps indicated what may happen within the next couple of years; people are going to go to the streets I believe. Because it's falling on deaf ear in governments. My own state, as others have pointed out, my governor has taken it upon himself to gut regulations by something called the Regulatory Basics Initiative. At the alter of economics, at the alter of increased profit for business, it's asinine.
I hope the school children here and the young babies in the audience live to their generation and live to have generations in the future, but I am becoming more cynical as I attend more and more meetings, and watch more and more studies proposed when studies aren't necessary. The facts are there. Let's get on with this project. I urge the Commissioners to urge the Parties to get on with the job at hand. Live up to maintaining and protecting and enhancing the biological integrity of this system. Thank you.
Pat Lupo, Benedictine Sisters, Erie, Pennsylvania
Good afternoon Commissioners. I am Pat Lupo. I am with the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania. I would like to begin by sharing the principles lived by my Benedictine community and modeled at Mount St. Benedict, our monastery and Glinodo Center, my place of ministry. Glinodo is a center rooted in Benedictine tradition, where we strive to educate and enable people to value self, others and the earth through recreation, spirituality and equal justice. This also permeates our actions at the monastery. Benedict mandated stewardship over 1,500 years ago. As we practice stewardship today, we emphasize that it is practiced first, in our watershed. We challenge ourselves and others to model sustainability in all that do, realizing that local actions impact global conditions.
The principles that are the basis of our ecological practices are stewardship, sustainability, equal justice and equal spirituality. Our approach is systems thinking. An approach oriented to looking at the interrelatedness of forces and seeing them as a whole -- parts of a common process -- an ecosystem approach. I believe that the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement is a document that recognizes sustainability and directs the Parties to implement it. An ecosystem approach, systems thinking has been tied to the Agreement from the beginning.
We all live in a watershed. I dare say that most of us here today live in a Great Lakes watershed. Lack of landuse planning, nonpoint sources of pollution, pollution credits trading or permits, biodiversity and trade issues and habitat loss, all happen in our watershed, the place we live. The IJC has provided a forum for citizens in the past and you must continue to do so in the future. We need to address these issues as well as challenge the often halting progress our governments are making.
I offer the following recommendations:
Let me say in closing, please have a look at the wonderful document that we have from President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development. I believe that only passion will sustain a lifelong commitment to stewardship. Let us all let passion for the earth fire our spirits. Thank you.
Susan Bayh, U.S. Commissioner, IJC
Let me just suggest one comment to Sister Lupo. First of all, if one person can make a difference, YOU are making a difference. We saw some of that outcome yesterday with your students, and secondly, I am thinking about moving to Pennsylvania so my kids can be exposed to you.
I would like the labour group to come up. I am about to introduce them for their 30 minute presentation.
In Europe and in the early days in the United States, the coal mine industry used canaries in their mines to check the healthfulness of the air that was being breathed by those people in the mines. People knew that when something happened to the canaries, something was going to happen to them. In modern days, they don't use canaries anymore. We are about to hear from a group who stands on the forefront of many environmental hazards -- the labour industry. In the past and as we explored with our labour-focused group in Toronto, there has been a traditional tension between the labour industry and the environmental movement -- that tug of war between jobs and the quality of the environment with most of the people in the labour industry caught right in the middle -- trying to decide whether to protect their jobs, protect themselves and their families. We want to encourage a dialogue in the environmental movement with the labour movement so other individuals can't use this wedge issue to divide us and to make sure everybody is working together for a quality, clean environment for our workers, for our families and a just transition in our industries.
Please come forward. I don't know all of your names so I am going to ask you to come forward and introduce yourselves. This is our presentation from the labour movement.