A Toledo Blade editorial, May 26, 2020
Last April, Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz said, “There’s no fight about the health of Lake Erie we would run from.”
The mayor made the promise to fight for a cleaner Lake Erie at a news conference in which he was blasting agricultural interests who have been fighting regulation to limit the farm runoff that is fueling annual lake algae blooms.
The mayor has frequently spoken up against the agricultural lobby, as well as the state and federal agencies that are failing to do their part to regulate pollution running down the Maumee River and out into Lake Erie where it fuels annual toxic algae blooms.
But talk is cheap.
Because when it came time to pursue an appeal of a court ruling that invalidated a Toledo city charter change that would protect the lake, the Kapszukiewicz administration quietly dropped the case.
When called out by advocates who managed to get the charter change approved as a ballot measure, city officials said the appeal would now be too costly as Toledo faces budget woes caused by the coronavirus crisis.
District Court Judge Jack Zouhary was blunt about the failings, as he sees them, of the Lake Erie Bill of Rights.
The bill of rights changed Toledo’s charter to grant legal rights to the lake itself and enables Toledo citizens to sue the sources of pollution now fouling its water.
The judge said invalidating the bill of rights was “not a close call.” The judge said the measure that is based on the legal principle of the rights of nature, “is unconstitutionally vague and exceeds the power of municipal government in Ohio.”
But the city has a role to play in protecting Lake Erie. Just as the federal and state regulators must step up and do what’s necessary to crack down on agricultural runoff in the Maumee River watershed, Toledo must do its part to protect the lake in its back yard.
In this case, that means not sheepishly slinking away from a court fight it committed to leading.
If the expense of outside counsel to manage the appeal is now prohibitively expensive, then maybe lawyers who work for the city should roll up their sleeves and take it on.
Or perhaps the city can turn to the well organized advocates who got the LEBOR amendment passed against all odds in the first place. Surely Toledoans for Safe Water or Advocates for a Clean Lake Erie would be willing to help raise money for a legal fund.
The fight to save Lake Erie is Toledo’s fight. The city cannot disappear now that times have gotten hard.
And any public official who can talk the talk about fighting to clean up the lake needs to also walk the walk.
See the original editorial here.