On whales, drinking water and the Great Lakes

A new documentary examines frightening contamination in the lakes and the wide-ranging consequences.

By Sandro Contenta , GlobalPost
Published: June 18, 2009 14:25 ET
Page 3 of 3

Making matters worse on the Canadian side is that industry doesn’t have to tell government what they’re dumping. Government scientists operate by guessing what chemicals might be present and then testing for them. Recently, they found a flame retardant chemical in the lakes that has been produced for 40 years.

Not surprisingly, fish stocks in the five Great Lakes are dwindling. Species that invaded after canals and locks for shipping were built are partly to blame. Zebra mussels, introduced by the ballast water of European ships, are particularly deadly, reproducing rapidly and siphoning nutrients from the food chain.

Fishermen that haven’t given up are struggling. Government agencies stock the lakes with millions of trout, but they rarely reproduce. And water levels are decreasing, which some scientists blame on global warming.

Faced with this litany of ecological degradation, Josephine Mandamin’s journey seems quixotic. The native grandmother was “moved by the spirits” to walk the Great Lakes’ 10,000 miles of shoreline. The film shows her offering tobacco to the water and praying it will someday run pure again.

“There’s a lot of apathy,” she lamented. “I’ve heard so many times, ‘You’re crazy’… But we know it’s for the betterment of the next generations.”

In an interview, McMahon applauded Obama for committing far more to clean up the Great Lakes than Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. But Obama’s $5 billion promise, if realized, is “a drop in the bucket” compared to the $1 trillion given to bailout banks from their own greed, McMahon said. Priorities, as usual, are skewed, he said.

(Americans can see "Waterlife" in August, on the Sundance Channel. You can find out more about the film and the state of the Great Lakes here and here.)

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Posted by vissermel on June 19, 2009 13:44 ET

It would seem that the Global Post would know that much of the toxicity in the Great Lakes is sourced from the developing world where countries have not and will not "voluntarily" give up PCBs and cheap and effective pesticides such as toxaphene and chlordane.

No matter how much sediment is dredged from the lakes, global air with 200,000,000 molecules of PCB per lungfull will keep the water and the whales contaminated.

Lake Superior's large Lake Trout now contain ten times the toxaphene that classifies dirt as hazardous waste and the States and Ontario have responded by no longer measuring toxaphene and reporting it in fish consumption guidelines.

The contamination o the Arctic is horrendous, and it is caused by developing nations too poor in spirit to care. Please think GLOBAL and do not encourage the wasteful and useless dredging of sediments. That is like replacing carpeting and ignoring the hole in the roof.

See: coldclearanddeadly.com

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