Protecting The Waters Of Our Great Lakes Is A Matter Of Political Will

By Doug Draper

Canada and the United States have the wealth and resources to protect and preserve the waters of our Great Lakes for present and future generations, says Lana Pollack, chair of the U.S. section of the International Joint Commission.

U.S. IJC chair Lana Pollack.

“I get personally tired of hearing that we are too poor (and) we don’t want to leave a deficit to our children,” added Pollack during the final hour this June 17 of a three-day ‘Power of Shared Waters’ conference mayors and other municipal leaders from both countries – all members of a coalition called the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative – held in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

There are other kinds of deficits that don’t simply involve money, said Pollack, who was appointed to the IJC, the official Canada-U.S. watchdog on Great Lakes waters, by President Barack Obama a year ago this June.  “I don’t want to leave a deficit in infrastructure. I don’t want to leave a deficit in clean water. I don’t want to leave a deficit in water quality. I don’t want to leave a deficit on water quantity.”
Pollack said both countries have the money to protect a Great Lakes system that is a basin for 20 per cent of all of the freshwater in the world. “It is a matter of how we choose to invest our money,” she said. It is a matter of “political will.”

Niagara Falls, Ontario Mayor Jim Diodati stressed the point during that final session that a large volume of the world’s freshwater flows down from the upper Great Lakes and cascades over the falls bordering his city. “When you realize the value of clean water in this world, … it is going to become the gold of this world and we have to treasure it,” he said.

“You never spit in the well of your village,” Diodati concluded, and by the same token, “we have to take care of our Great Lakes.”

The conference ended with the ceremonial unveiling of a commemorative plague marking the centennial celebrations of the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty – a ground-breaking treaty between Canada and the U.S. that remains an international model for nations to address trans-boundary environmental concerns to this day.

The Boundary Waters Treaty, celebrated in Niagara Falls, Ontario and Niagara Falls, New York two years ago this spring with a special ceremony on the Rainbow Bridge attended by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, led to the creation of the International Joint Commission as the body monitoring and making recommendations to both countries for protecting the health of our shared waters.

The plaque will be displayed on both sides of the river, at Centennial Circle in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and on Niagara Parks Commission lands in Niagara Falls, Ontario near the Rainbow Bridge.

One of the inscriptions, from Hillary Clinton, will reads; “The Boundary Waters Treat of 1909 made official something that people from both sides of the border have known for generations: that the rivers, the lakes, the streams, and the watersheds along our boundary do not belong to one nation or to another, but to both of us.”

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