This article by Alan Guebert was published in the Beatrice Daily Sun on March 21st, 2019.

If the ballot box is the ultimate source of power in the United States, then voters in Toledo, Ohio, used that power Feb. 26 to create what’s now being called a “Bill of Rights” for their wide, blue neighbor, Lake Erie.

That vote, if it withstands court challenges (one was filed immediately after the referendum passed) gives any Toledo citizen legal standing to sue any person or corporation on behalf of Lake Erie over its “right” to be clean and environmentally healthy.

Lake Erie’s newly conferred/newly challenged rights have farmers in northwest Ohio deeply concerned because they have long been seen as a key source of the phosphorus run-off that fuels late-summer, toxic algae blooms in the lake, that also serves as Toledo’s public water source.

But it’s not just Toledo. The toxic blooms, according to press reports, threaten the water supply of 12 million American and Canadian citizens living near Lake Erie and jeapordize more than $1 billion a year spent in Ohio on lake tourism.

Those are big numbers and big threats to everyone, including Big Ag. Still, and quite unusually, farm groups offered no organized resistance to the Toledo ballot initiative, says Ohio Farmers Union President Joe Logan.

“Everyone on both sides of the vote tried to keep it under the radar, assuming it wouldn’t pass. But lightening struck and, boom, it passed.”

Read the rest of this article at its original source HERE.