Well, that was fast.
Within hours of Toledo voters approving a ballot measure to establish a Lake Erie Bill of Rights, opponents filed a federal lawsuit to block it.
The challenge was expected. After all, much is at stake with a change to Toledo city charter that grants legal rights to the lake itself and enables Toledo citizens to sue the sources of pollution now fouling its water.
Toledoans for Safe Water and Advocates for a Clean Lake Erie had multiple court fights just to get the bill of rights on the ballot. But after years of advocacy, lobbying, and lawsuits of their own did not bring any meaningful reforms, they asked, what choice did they have?
Granting the lake legal standing may seem extreme and even kooky. But if LEBOR sounds ridiculous, what are we to make of the fact that state and federal authorities who should be working to save Lake Erie have basically abdicated their responsibility to do so?
If legal teams opposed to the Lake Erie Bill of Rights can move with such lightning speed to protect agriculture concerns and other polluters, why don’t the environmental regulators move with any urgency to stop the flow of algae-feeding pollution into the lake?
Why does it take years for the state of Ohio to acknowledge that its voluntary pollution-reduction programs are not only not adequate to reach the goal of 20 percent phosphorus pollution reduction by 2020, but that they have been having no measurable effect?
Why does Toledo still have just one, single, vulnerable water intake in the lake?
Why do we still have no serious plan to do a scientific inventory of the pollution sources in the Maumee River watershed so that we can craft a meaningful pollution diet for the region?
It has been almost five years since the water supply for more than half a million Toledo water customers was rendered unsafe to drink for three days by algae toxins. Why are we still waiting for a plan to prevent that from happening again?
The legal fate of the Lake Erie Bill of Rights is in the hands of courts. The fate of the lake itself does not have to hang in the balance of that court fight.
It is a new day in Columbus with a new governor, new Ohio EPA director, and new leadership in the General Assembly. Now is the time for the DeWine Administration to embrace scientific reality — that phosphorus from agricultural runoff is killing the lake and threatening our drinking water, our economic development, and our quality of life.
And there should be no more waiting for a real Lake Erie cleanup plan based on pollution limits backed by the force of law.
The time to move slowly is over. The time to act swiftly to save Lake Erie is now.
First Published March 1, 2019, 10:30 a.m.
