It’s a cautionary turbine tale.

Last week, Burlington-based Windstream Energy challenged the province to approve a “test pilot” project to install 130 wind turbines — built in Hamilton — in eastern Lake Ontario, despite a provincial moratorium on offshore projects.

Mark Mullins wishes them luck. The Dundas resident has been down this political path before — and it led to a $2.2-billion lawsuit against the provincial government.

Mullins and Martin Parker are Hamilton-based partners in Trillium Power Wind Corp., which saw its plans for a big offshore wind project near Kingston blown away by the province’s pre-election moratorium last February.

The longtime renewable power investor is no longer convinced offshore wind projects will ever gain approval. “This wasn’t a moratorium, this was a cancellation of all offshore wind projects in Ontario,” said Mullins. “This isn’t about the need for more studies.”

The government says more environmental studies are under way in Sweden and on the U.S. side of Lake Erie. Ted McMeekin, a Liberal Hamilton cabinet minister, recently told The Spectator the government is committed to growing the green energy sector, but has to “create jobs responsibly.”

Read the full story from January 27, 2012 via TheSpec – More offshore turbine turbulence in Hamilton.

Despite a high-profile farm lobby group joining a growing movement pushing for a moratorium on wind power development, the province will not reverse course on the controversial plan.

So says St. Catharines MPP and Minister of the Environment Jim Bradley. Late last week, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture called on the government to suspend wind turbine development so it can address a number of issues. Bradley said the government takes OFA’s request seriously, but will continue to develop wind projects throughout Ontario.

“That will be taken into consideration, particularly by the Ministry of Energy, Ministry of the Environment and the government as a whole,” Bradley said of the OFA statement.

“I can tell you that our government is certainly committed to green energy and the creation of green energy jobs, which we’re seeing across the province.”

Read the full story from January 25, 2012 by  Shawn Jeffords via Farmers’ concerns won’t stop development of wind power: Bradley – St. Catharines Standard, Niagara Region, Sun Media – Ontario, CA.

Mark Mattson, president of Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, said if South Frontenac Township’s Portland landfill near Verona is leaking contaminated surface water into the nearby wetland, the municipality is legally obliged to stop it.

Mattson said discharging contaminants into a wetland is prohibited by the federal Fisheries Act and the Ontario Water Resources Act.

“There is no confusion about what the legal requirements are,” Mattson said Thursday.

Earlier this week, the Ministry of the Environment sent a letter to the township informing it of high levels of chemicals that were detected in leachate entering the wetland from the landfill.

Leachate is a mix of rainwater and chemicals from the garbage.

A township official said Wednesday that while the ministry’s data is collected at the edge of the landfill, when the water flows west out of the wetland — and leaves township property — it meets provincial water quality standards.

Mattson said such reasoning is becoming more common as municipalities seek ways to avoid costly environmental cleanups or protection methods.

“That is not consistent with Canadian environmental law,” he said.

“The engineers have been pushing back against environmental law for some time.”

Mattson said such positions in the long run undermine environmental law and help to lower the quality of life for the community.

“I know it’s expensive but environmental law is not easy,” Mattson said.

He said the only solution would be to cap and seal the landfill to prevent any more rainwater from mixing with the garbage.

Mattson said he has seen hundreds of landfills across the country, many of them with the potential to contaminate nearby watersheds.

Historically, landfills have been placed near water bodies and eastern Ontario is no exception.

Between 1952 and 1974, the site of Kingston’s Belle Park along the Cataraqui River was used as a landfill before it was closed by the Ministry of the Environment.

“I can probably show you 15 of these,” said Terry Murphy, general manager of Quinte Conservation.

“They used to put all the bad stuff next to the water because they wanted to get rid of it,” he said.

“It wouldn’t happen today.”

The Portland landfill and the adjacent wetland are in the Napanee River watershed, part of the area for which the conservation authority is responsible.

Quinte Conservation operates a 23-hectare conservation area across the road from the landfill.

Murphy said he supports the ministry’s efforts to eliminate the contamination.

via Leaking landfill illegal: lawyer – The Whig Standard – Ontario, CA.

When it came to government relations, Ontario’s largest farm organization, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA), often seemed to adopt the philosophy “go along to get along.”

Certainly, at times, the OFA found itself in conflict with the provincial government, but it was civil conflict.

One example involved the introduction of the Clean Water Act in 2006.

“Ontario farmers saw mixed blessings in the proclamation of Ontario’s Clean Water Act … they saw elements of the act that would protect agriculture from a repeat of anything like the Walkerton drinking water disaster, but were anxious about the government’s failure to fund the improvements required of agriculture. OFA encouraged farmers to become involved in the Source Protection Committees as a means of protecting agriculture’s interests.”

In other words, don’t be trapped on the outside looking in. Work within the system.Another example further illustrates the organization’s tactics.

“Early in 2007, OFA participated in the Premier’s Summit on Agri-Food and gave its full support to the vision of growth and innovation for the industry that emerged as the key focus.”

With this hail-fellow-well-met approach to politicians and government, the OFA has accomplished a lot of incremental improvements for agriculture, but they have been evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

So, shock waves must have rippled through that tiny corner of Queen’s Park that still cares about rural Ontario when the federation took a new stand on wind turbine developments. Here’s some of the language from the OFA statement: “The situation regarding Industrial Wind Turbines (IWT) has become untenable. The proliferation of wind turbines across rural Ontario has seriously polarized our rural communities.

“Residents not engaged in turbine developments have been pitted against neighbours, over concerns with health impacts and quality of life issues. IWT development currently preoccupies the rural agenda.”

Read the full story via OFA’s switch on wind power sends a chill – Belleville Intelligencer – Ontario, CA.

TORONTO, January 24, 2012 — Two prominent figures from the worlds of art and environment are coming together for the first time to help raise funds for the Toronto-based Lake Ontario Waterkeeper on its 10th anniversary. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President of Waterkeeper Alliance and son of the U.S. political figure, and Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky will co-host a gala dinner and art auction presented by RBC on Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at Corus Quay in Toronto.

Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Burtynsky will be joined by other Waterkeeper supporters from the worlds of art, sports, and science, including Joseph Boyden (Giller Prize winning author), Wade Davis (National Geographic explorer), Denise Donlon (media executive and television host), Gord Downie (musician and poet), Kevin Lowe (NHL all-star) and Karen Percy Lowe (Olympic medalist).

“Waterkeeper believes in a world where it is safe to swim, drink the water, and eat a fish,” said Mark Mattson, President, Lake Ontario Waterkeeper. “With the vision of artists, the wisdom of scientists, the courage of athletes, and leadership from the business community, we can achieve a swimmable, drinkable and fishable world.”

Over a dozen works of art will be auctioned off at this sold-out gala to help Waterkeeper restore Lake Ontario. Contributing artists include Michael Adamson, Ed Bartram, Paul Beliveau, Edward Burtynsky, Barbara Cole, Barbara Davidson, GAGNON, David Grieve, Daniel Hughes, Stewart Jones, Anita Kunz, Raymond Martin, Charles Pachter, Peter Rotter, Joe Sampson and Su Sheedy. The works can be previewed at waterkeeper.ca/gala.

The inaugural Waterkeeper Gala is presented by RBC with contributions from Bullfrog Power, Corus Entertainment, Mill Street Brewery, and Waddington’s / Concrete Contemporary Auctions and Projects.

After contaminated drinking water caused seven deaths in Walkerton, Ontario, Mark Mattson and Krystyn Tully started Lake Ontario Waterkeeper to protect the province’s most important drinking water source. Lake Ontario provides drinking water to nine-million people in Canada and the USA, including those in the Greater Toronto Area, Kingston and Hamilton. 

Lake Ontario Waterkeeper is the first Ontario member of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Waterkeeper Alliance, a global network of 200 watershed protection organizations. The group works for a swimmable, drinkable, fishable Lake Ontario. 

More information: waterkeeper.ca/gala

BACKGROUNDER

Co-Hosts

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a resolute defender of the environment. Mr. Kennedy serves as President of Waterkeeper Alliance, a global network of 200 grassroots environmental organizations. He is a professor at Pace University’s Environmental Litigation Clinic and co-host of Ring of Fire on Air America Radio. Mr. Kennedy is a graduate of Harvard University. He studied at the London School of Economics and received his law degree from the University of Virginia Law School. He is a licensed master falconer. Mr. Kennedy was named one of Time magazine’s “Heroes for the Planet” for his success leading the fight to restore the Hudson River.

Edward Burtynsky
Edward Burtynsky is one of Canada’s most respected photographers. His remarkable photographic depictions of global industrial landscapes are included in the collections of over fifty major museums around the world. Mr. Burtynsky’s distinctions include the TED Prize, The Outreach award at the Rencontres d’Arles, The Flying Elephant Fellowship, Applied Arts Magazine book award(s), and the Roloff Beny Book award. He holds four honorary doctorate degrees and was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of Canada in 2006.

Special Guests

Joseph Boyden
Joseph Boyden is a novelist and short story writer who studied creative writing at York University and the University of New Orleans. Joseph writes about First Nations heritage and culture. His novels include Three Day Road (2005) and Through Black Spruce (2008). Joseph is the winner of the Giller Prize, Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Joseph is a founder and President of Moose Riverkeeper.

Wade Davis
Wade Davis is an ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker. He is currently Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. Wade’s photography has been featured in 20 books and over 80 different magazine, journals, and newspapers. Wade had received numerous awards including the Golden Medal of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and the Explorers Medal. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1998. Wade’s newest books are Into the Silence and The Sacred Headwaters.

Denise Donlon
Denise Donlon is a Canadian media executive, television producer, television host, and program director. Her career began at MuchMusic as a host and producer; she became MuchMusic’s director of music programming, Vice President and General Manager. She has also worked for Sony Music Canada (President), CHUM (Board of Directors), and at CBC Radio (Executive Director). Denise was named one of Canada’s Top 100 Powerful Women, and is a board member of the Governor General’s Lifetime Achievement Performing Arts Awards. Denise was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 2004. She has been a Trustee for Lake Ontario since 2007.

Gord Downie
Gord Downie is the lead vocalist and driving creative force behind “Canada’s band”, The Tragically Hip, who have thrilled audiences around the world with their live performances for two decades. When not writing, recording and touring tirelessly with The Tragically Hip, Downie also enjoys a successful career as a solo artist. In the summer of 2001, he released Coke Machine Glow – an album accompanied by a book of poetry, of the same name. Coke Machine Glow garnered critical acclaim, paving the way for 2003′s Battle of the Nudes and 2010′s The Grand Bounce. Gord has been a tireless supporter and Trustee for Lake Ontario since 2006.

Kevin Lowe
Kevin Lowe is a retired NHL defenseman who played for the Edmonton Oiler and the New York Rangers. Kevin is currently the President of Hockey Operations for the Edmonton Oilers. As well as being a six-time Stanley Cup winner, Kevin was a five-time NHL all-star. Kevin sits on the board of directors of North Saskatchewan Riverkeeper and is an active Waterkeeper Alliance trustee.

Karen Percy Lowe
Karen Percy Lowe is a Canadian alpine skier who won two bronze medals at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics near her hometown of Banff. Karen became a Member of the Order of Canada in 1988 and received an Olympic Champion award at The Tribute to the Champions in 1989. Karen is recognized in the Canadian Ski Hall of Fame and the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame. Karen is co-founder, chairperson, and president of North Saskatchewan Riverkeeper and is an active Waterkeeper Alliance trustee.

Lake Ontario Waterkeeper’s Co-Founders

Mark Mattson, President & Waterkeeper
Mark Mattson is a prominent environmental lawyer whose love of water stems from his childhood summers swimming and fishing on Wolfe Island, near Kingston. Born into a family of lawyers in Southern Ontario, Mark grew up with a passion for fairness and individual rights. He pursued a career in law, but abandoned the corporate world shortly after graduation in order to dedicate his work to protecting the natural environment. As a prosecutor, first for government and then for the non-profit sector, Mark was part of groundbreaking private prosecutions and administrative cases against major industrial polluters. 

After ten years in the courtroom, Mark began to devote more time to developing institutions that will restore and protect watersheds for generations to come. He founded Lake Ontario Waterkeeper in 2001 and remains the organization’s full-time Waterkeeper and President to this day.

Krystyn Tully, Vice President
Krystyn Tully grew up in Oshawa, Ontario, where she saw first-hand how communities disconnected from their waterfronts struggle culturally and economically. Since co-founding Lake Ontario Waterkeeper with Mark Mattson in 2001, Krystyn has been able to help win back some of the watershed’s lost spaces and strengthen its vanishing waterfront culture. She has written or edited more than 400 articles about water and environmental policy. For two years, she was editor and co-host of the Living at the Barricades radio program. Krystyn has appeared before numerous municipal, provincial, and federal government committees, including defending navigation rights at the Standing Committee on Finance. In 2010, Krystyn began designing Swim Guide, a mobile app and website that will connect people to clean, local beaches. 

For more information about our Co-Hosts, special guests, and the founders of Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, please visit waterkeeper.ca/gala.

The Swim Guide campaign will be available on Groupon Toronto’s G-Team page beginning on Tuesday, January 24 and running through Thursday, January 26. Utilizing G-Team’s collective action model, Groupon subscribers can pledge support for the Swim Guide initiative in increments of $10, with each $20 level reached providing beach monitoring at one beach for one month. Please make a $10 donation to help us reach our $300 tipping point.

Lake Ontario Waterkeeper monitors water quality at 1,100 of beaches in the USA and Canada each day throughout the swimming season. Your support will allow us to sustain our monitoring program in Toronto for the 2012 beach season.

“We are excited to employ the collective action model of G-Team to raise support for clean beaches in Toronto via Swim Guide,” said Mark Mattson, President and Lake Ontario Waterkeeper. “We look forward to creating new awareness for Lake Ontario Waterkeeper as one of the local organizations in Toronto to be featured on G-Team.”

100% percent of the G-Team campaign proceeds will be used to monitor each of Toronto’s official beaches.

Swim Guide solves the beach information problem. It educates you about beach water quality issues. It draws attention to areas in need of better environmental protection. And it fosters a community’s connection to its local water.

Every donation made through G-Team will monitor beaches in Toronto in 2012. Help us solve the water quality problem. 

Groupon
Erin Yeager
312.999.3434
eyeager@groupon.com

Water quality at many beaches is declining. As many as 300,000 Canadians and Americans will become ill after being in contact with contaminated water this year, posing a real threat to human health. Contaminated beaches are environmental concerns. Near-shore pollution degrades fish habitat, alters genes of aquatic wildlife, cripples the food chain, and threatens human health. This must change.

To safely connect more people to their beaches and to strengthen our beach communities’ local economies, people need basic information about where it’s safe to swim. They need information to be trustworthy, up-to-date, easy to understand, and accessible.

About G-Team
G-Team, launched in July 2010 in Chicago, features a weekly local campaign in more than 65 markets nationwide, enabling Groupon followers to do good, have fun, and make a real impact in their communities. G-Team uses collective action to gather support for worthwhile causes and produce tangible results for local organizations. To learn more about G-Team and how to become a featured organization, visit http://www.groupon.com/g-team. To subscribe to Groupon, visit http://www.groupon.com.

Canada has dramatically increased the amount of money it will invest in a long-awaited cleanup program on the north shore of Lake Ontario. The previous cleanup cost estimate was about $250-million.

“We are so thrilled – so relieved – that the government is recognizing how important it is to clean up Port Hope,” says Waterkeeper Mark Mattson.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people are intervening in a Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission hearing happening in Port Hope this week. At issue is whether the nuclear regulator should renew operating licences for Cameco’s fuel-making projects in Port Hope.

Cameco, formerly known as Eldorado, was the original source of much of the historical low-level radioactive waste pollution in the town and is one of the most controversial industrial sites in Canada.

The public hearing started Tuesday night and continues Wednesday. You can watch the proceedings live on the CNSC website.

Waterkeeper filed a written intervention with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission asking that the licence address the following concerns in order to protect the environment:

1. The licence should address stormwater emissions from the site, which currently contain more than twice the CNSC’s internal limit on uranium discharges.

2. The licence should include discharge limits for all other effluent sources, including non-contact cooling water. These limits should be commensurate with federal and provincial standards for the protection of aquatic life.

3. The licence should not permit the discharge of process effluent to the environment.

Our submission is available here.

It is an important time for Port Hope. With a new funding commitment and an active, engaged community, the decisions being considered this week could – at long last – lead to a clean water future for this historic town.

• Government of Canada Announces Funding for Implementation Phase of the Port Hope Area Initiative
  
• Watch the public hearing
  
• Waterkeeper’s licensing concerns

But nuclear critics Dr. Dale Dewar and Gordon Edwards say Ottawa’s notion of what is a “safe” level of radiation can still cause serious health risks for some people.

In fact, Canada’s ceiling for radiation in food is set at a level that would lead to 5,000 to 8,000 cancers per million people over a 70-year lifetime of exposure, according to Health Canada’s models and those of a 2006 U.S. National Academy of Sciences report on cancer risk from radiation. (About half of the cancers would be fatal.)

That works out to 170,000 to 270,000 lifetime cancers if all 34 million Canadians were exposed at the “safe” level.

Read the full story via The debate in Canada: What is a ‘safe’ level of radiation?.

Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver made the announcement in Port Hope on Friday morning.

Experts had long predicted the cost of the cleanup, earlier pegged at about $260 million, would balloon. Cleanup of low-level radioactive waste scattered through the picturesque town east of Toronto entails digging out more than 1.2 million cubic metres of soil — enough for 500 Olympic-size pools — and will take a decade.

The waste was the result of 50 years of radium and uranium refining at Cameco refinery, the former Crown corporation Eldorado Nuclear Ltd., from the 1930s to the 1980s.

Contaminated soil used as fill was identified as a health hazard in the late ’70s, but it has taken decades to find a long-term solution.

The waste will be dug up from numerous hot spots and taken to a new storage facility north of town, where it will be sealed up and monitored.

The long-term storage facility will be built at the existing old waste site and adjacent property just south of Highway 401; it has the capacity to manage more than 1.9 million cubic metres of contaminated soil.

The mound — something like a gigantic bathtub with an air-tight cover — will isolate the waste within thick, multiple layers of a double-base liner and cover system.

“Today’s funding announcement confirms the federal government’s ongoing commitment to the Port Hope Area Initiative,” said Port Hope Mayor Linda Thompson.

Read the full story by Raveena Aulakh from January 13, 2012 via Toronto News: Port Hope radioactive cleanup gets $1.28B federal funding – thestar.com.

Days before the New Year, Brighton became the first town in Monroe County to enact a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, the controversial process of injecting a high-volume, high-pressure mix of water, sand and chemicals deep into the ground in order to extract natural gas from ancient shale deposits.

Could the town of Rush be next?

Read the full story by Leo Roth from January 9, 2012 via Fracking debate heats up in Monroe County | Democrat and Chronicle | democratandchronicle.com.