Why Lake Erie has the same rights as a person in Toledo, Ohio

Lake Erie’s green algal blooms — often attributed to agricultural pollution — have in some years caused thousands of dead fish to wash up on our shores.

Most Canadians seem unaware of the lake’s newfound legal rights. But it begs the question of whether Ontario farmers bear responsibility for the lake’s woes, too.

by Aaron Hutchins Macleans May 20, 2019

Dennis Laporte describes his life as “always having one foot in the bed, one foot in the water.” He was born and raised next to the Detroit River—the Ontario side, on the outskirts of Windsor. As an adult, he moved to a waterfront property along the southern shores of Lake St. Clair in the town of Belle River, Ont. And for the last 30 years or so, Laporte has resided by Lake Erie, working as a charter captain and fisherman.

One would be hard pressed to find someone with a more personal relationship to these waters than Laporte. He works six days a week on the water in the summer. The name of his company? Walleye University. A three-dimensional topographical map of Lake Erie hangs on the dining room wall of his modest waterfront property in Kingsville, Ont.—the southernmost town in mainland Canada. The 70-year-old keeps a telescope by the back window, with which he tracks passing boats—and considerable amounts of algae and garbage. “In some areas, it looks like a picnic site,” Laporte says. “You know when someone leaves behind a dirty picnic site by the beach? It ends up in the lake. I can tell where you bought your potato salad.”

What his telescope can’t see is that across the border in Toledo, Ohio, the same body of water is an even greater lake, now that it’s been granted the same civil legal rights as a person. Under the newly passed Lake Erie Bill of Rights, the lake can sue a company or individual that is infringing on its right to “exist, flourish and naturally evolve” by polluting the Western Lake Erie Basin, explains Markie Miller, an organizer of Toledoans for Safe Water, a group that supported the bill. “It wouldn’t be ‘Markie Miller v. Corporation A,’ but I would be able to bring a case forward of ‘Lake Erie v. Corporation A.’ And then I would be personally responsible for that lawsuit.”

The law may benefit Canadians like Laporte along the shared water body, and it was born of crisis. In August 2014, residents of Toledo woke to orders that no one consume the city’s tap water due to a massive bloom of toxic algae in its source, the lake. For three days, nearly half a million residents had to leave town to obtain safe drinking water. Restaurants shut down. Grocery stores ran out of bottled water.

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