This article by Tom Henry appeared in The Toledo Blade, August 7th, 2018.
A grassroots community group called Toledoans for Safe Water said it has secured more than enough signatures to get a proposal for defending Lake Erie from future pollution threats on the 2018 fall election ballot.
The initiative is called the Lake Erie Bill of Rights. It is described by the group as a “first-in-the-nation ecosystem rights of nature initiative by the people” to declare in the Toledo City Charter that the Lake Erie watershed has legal rights to “exist and flourish.”
At a news conference in the lobby of One Government Center on Monday morning, Toledoans for Safe Water said it had collected 10,500 signatures, twice the number required to get the initiative on the Nov. 6 ballot.
A Lucas County Board of Elections official said that agency has 10 days to determine how many signatures are valid. Based on its findings, city councilmen will decide whether to place the initiative on the ballot, she said.
Toledoans for Safe Water said it is comprised of volunteers seeking innovative ways to protect Lake Erie. It said that passage of the initiative will give citizen groups legal standing to sue major polluters on behalf of Lake Erie, even if drinking water is cleaned up enough by the city to prevent harm to residents.
Lake Erie Bill of Rights organizer Markie Miller said signatories used “their right to self-governance to protect the resources we rely on and create the community we envision.”
“Four years ago, we lost access to our drinking water and had to face our vulnerability,” she said, adding that the high-profile 2014 Toledo water crisis “should have been a wake-up call to initiate policies that prevent pollution and harm.”
Instead, Ms. Miller said, past practices have been protected. MORE…