This article by Daniel McGraw appeared in the Cleveland Scene, on, December 26th, 2018.
After a long and arduous process that has gone through the Ohio Supreme Court and various public agencies, citizens in Toledo, Ohio will finally get their chance in February to vote on a bill that has caught the attention of environmental groups worldwide.
The citizen-led ballot initiative, called the “Lake Erie Bill of Rights,” has an odd premise for an industrial Midwest city. Voters in Lucas County will decide if the lake is more or less a private corporation, and has similar rights of redress and compensation for harm that a private company might have when harmed by another. If approved on the Feb. 26 ballot, Lake Erie would be considered a company and the citizens its shareholders.
The initiative is complicated to begin with, and obviously has had some enviro lawyer noodling to make it even more complicated. But this paragraph up high explains it in basic terms:
“We the people of the City of Toledo find that laws ostensibly enacted to protect us, and to foster our health, prosperity, and fundamental rights do neither; and that the very air, land, and water – on which our lives and happiness depend – are threatened. Thus it has become necessary that we reclaim, reaffirm, and assert our inherent and inalienable rights, and to extend legal rights to our natural environment in order to ensure that the natural world, along with our values, our interests, and our rights, are no longer subordinated to the accumulation of surplus wealth and unaccountable political power.” MORE…