Wednesday 11 August 2010

The Province of Ontario wants to Improve it's Water




Ministry of the Environment
ontario.ca/environment

What is progress?  Is it the application of new technology, or is it a change in people's mental processes that leads to fundamental improvements in their welfare.  I believe it is the latter and I am sure it is very hard to accomplish and not something a government can do!

It's wonderful to hear that Ontario wants to lead the world in clean water, but have they forgotten that they have created a messy environment that humans and technology alone cannot resolve!

Read this first:


See what the Ontario province says are it's objectives:


There is a disconnect and I was surprised when I opened the Ontario Province's web site for the first time. Obviously, as an old time Ontario and Quebec resident that has been away to other lands, I am like a visitor here from Mars looking at earthly Ontario and wondering what the poor earthlings have done to deceive themselves, or is it all rhetoric for public consumption.  

You do one thing while saying another.  What is this public myth that everyone laps up?  Do they not notice the negative change over the past fifty years?  Or, has it been so gradual that it is not noticed?  Or more likely, there is only so much that you can do as a government department because human nature is not going to change much to really open people's eyes to what they are doing that has a negative impact.  

However, if you give people the feel good about their efforts perhaps you can escape the realization when it eventually arrives that you did not do very much at all because:

1.  You did not know what to do!

2.  You could not change human nature to do the opposite of what you wanted them to do!

Both of the above define limits to your effectiveness.

I read with pride that Ontario preaches and practices clean water, yet when as a stranger from another province, I see horrendous shortcomings, I have to wonder what all the polemic is about.

I wrote the following letter this morning to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment with regard to the Grand Bend Sewer system which I think is about cleaning water: 
  
Dear Cindy!

Thank you for your very informative letter. I do appreciate your answering my message of concerns about how the local project has evolved and that it has a decadent life of it's own that is hitting many surprising extremes from my point of view. I would prefer that the province figure out it's sanitation issues within the provincial park's limits rather than expect a nearby locality to absorb such costs.

The local community should in turn figure out its own sanitation issues within guidelines that are established by the larger community. After all, the population of Grand Bend is very small being under 2,000 and from a map survey it's lagoons are much larger than towns with populations multiples it's size. In summer, the population grows, but the systems for each cottage absorb such expansion very well normally.

By making Grand Bend into a typical polluting town, one is using the popular language of growth and progress. Our reality, however, is that the temporary wealthy drive the price of homes here up so high that local residents cannot survive on the limited numbers of jobs that exist year round. By placing additional costs onto the local people, the province is driving out potential investment and it is not enough to say the province is investing in Grand Bend since government jobs and money here are not the answer to the location's needs. We need more sustainable investment that comes from more people looking after their own environments and taking personal responsibility for their home and local community environments.

Who counts the co2 that is being created from the concrete poured or the tarmac laid? Who weighs the vehicles that pour co2 into the airs above the roads that travel through the village? Are there no long term standards, or are there no effective agencies to examine these issues and participate in discussions around the world? What are you doing?

My overall concern is that there seems an absence of clear design in the environmental approach of the province that continues blindly down paths that are not sustainable over the longer term. No will exists to slow down the deterioration. Bad habits of environmental destruction continue. The consultants retained for the sewerage project seem to take a very partial view of the environment and local economy. The sewer needs to be placed in the wider context of the environment. What is good technology for a small rural community that has absentee residents most of the time?

I am reminded of Schumacher's phrase that small is beautiful. What appropriate technologies are there for the farmers who would drive lawn mowers rather than plant trees. They spend millions on grass fertilizers and weed killers, but don't plant trees. Golf courses abound without lakes and tall trees. Swathes of land are cleared of trees and topsoil, bulldozing is a hobby of local employment for semi-skilled people who should be doing carpentry and working in furniture factories or making and installing affordable hardwood flooring in every home rather than manufacturing with chemicals for artificial fabrics that pollute and cause cancer.

Although we have trees, we need many more spaces for tree planting. We need to restore the forest not take it down, bulldoze and pore yet more concrete and build more second homes for those who drive ever larger vehicles and have a mindset of a oil guzzling era. We need to get farmers to plant trees and create wetlands to restore what was once a balance, but which is dangerously close to being a natural disaster. I am ashamed that the Ontario environment relative to that across the lake in Michigan is so much deteriorated in relative terms over the last century.

We think nothing of the employment in furniture factories that once abounded in the province based on hardwoods that once abounded in the province. Where are those hardwood forests now, where are the many forest jobs that once were. Why were the trees not replanted to give a future to the rural communities.

It's not good enough to plant a few pine trees and claim that we are working on the environment, when we can see the run offs arriving in Grand Bend harbour from farms that prefer grass and lawns to trees. Where is the natural habitat going?

I am disturbed at how much the Ontario environment has deteriorated over the five decades that I have been away. Many of the large trees are gone without being replaced. Towns have put sewerage systems on small lakes that used to be full of natural life tadpoles, frogs and snakes in turn. The water runoff from farms has darkened the rivers and creeks to the point that they smell and remain brown and toxic long enough to kill natural life.

I expect a bit of radicalism from ordinary folk, but when a government institution accepts as normal something that is radical to the extreme, all my alarm bells start ringing and I get excited, full of worry for people nearby who are being taken for a costly ride by organizations that should know better, but apparently don't.

It's fashionable these days to get involved in environmental issues. I am very sure you would agree that the continuing substantive runoff from many farms is an indication that we in Ontario are not yet up to the task ahead.

Yours sincerely, AW Lake

Will ye no think kindly on those who would be your friends! May the sun shine with your thoughts, today, and happiness grow in your heart! May you allow yourself some peace of mind.


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Posted By RT LAKE to Wooooooh's Stream on 8/11/2010 09:04:00 AM

Will ye no think kindly on those who would be your friends!  May the sun shine with your thoughts, today, and happiness grow in your heart! May you allow yourself some peace of mind.
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