A Commentary by Doug Draper
On the days in and around this past Labour Day weekend, tens of thousands of rotting fish washed up along the Lake Erie shoreline.
Rotting fish along the shore. File photo
According to media reports,Ontario’s Ministry of Environment is still investigating the cause of the massive fish kill, which may or may not have something to do with sudden temperature changes in the waters or the lake and air sheds above it, or may be a result of a growing phosphorus contamination problem in Lake Erie which is robbing the lake waters of oxygen needed to support other aquatic life.
Another question that interests me is one asked in a Toronto Star story – who is going to be responsible for cleaning all of these stinking fish carcasses up – and I say the answer is simple. If lakeshore property owners insist, as they have in their opposition to another private members bill Niagara Falls, Ontario provincial parliamentary member Kim Craitor has tabled for some right to public access to lake beaches along the waterline, that those beaches are ‘their private backyard’ right down to the waterline, then let them clean these carcasses up. I don’t ask them to clean up any tree branches that fall in my backyard following a wind storm. Why should any of my taxdollars go to cleaning up dead fish washing up on their beach?
In a post Niagara At Large ran earlier this summer on Craitor’s attempt to get a bill passed by the provincial government, allowing at least some access to the waterline area along Lake Erie and other lakes lined by private homes and cottages, NAL received comments from some arguing that allowing such access is akin to saying it is okay for anyone to wander across someone’s backyard.
If that is the case, then people who own property along our lakeshores should not have it both ways. Don’t tell us, on the one hand, that there should be no right to access to the waterline area along a lake behind their homes, then turn around and expect government agencies to use our taxdollars to keep up contamination washing up the shores.
If you truly believe you own all of the shoreline, except for the few public beach areas we have that our public agencies are obviously responsible for, then you clean it up!
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post below, rememberin that NAL only posts comments by individuals who also share their first and last names.)
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Somehow I doubt that will happen. They like it both ways.
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Doug you said it. Those in charge don’t give a hoot, and they talk a lot at election time, and forget about it, the day after, where is the 59 million Dalton promised last election to help the Great Lakes. These promises are just throwaway comments to suck in the people who do care, to vote for his party. I don’t like people who lie. This guy can never tell the truth. Lake Erie has had blue/green algae for years and that stuff is toxic and can be deadly, it fosters botulism among other things and depletes the oxygen in the lake. When have a human death count we may get some action, and not until then.
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