Fall, 2000
Dear Friend:
Before EBI was founded three years ago, environmental organizations had never successfully conducted a private prosecution, the federal government rarely prosecuted polluters, and most provincial governments had all but stopped prosecuting polluters. The result: a cozy government-corporate culture of "managing pollution" that amounted to a licence to pollute our air and water. Even in Ontario – which, despite cutbacks, still conducts prosecutions – citizen complaints rarely ever get to the Ministry of Environment's Investigative Enforcement Branch. Instead, complaints are referred to the Ministry's Abatement Branch, which sends officers to the polluting industries to provide advice on how to cut back on their pollution, to let them know what government programs are available, and to gently encourage them to comply. In many cases, these consultations went on for years, while the pollution continued to spew out into the environment. This abatement process may never lead to a subsequent prosecution, no matter how long the polluter drags his feet.
Two years ago, this deplorable situation actually became worse. The Ontario government announced that it would no longer be responsible for enforcing the federal Fisheries Act – the legislation polluters feared most. Since the federal government rarely enforces this legislation, the Ontario government was effectively giving polluters open season on our waterways.
Even though many of Ontario's environmental investigators have been retired, fired, or moved to other departments, the Mike Harris government continues to gut enforcement. Since coming to power, it has closed and downsized laboratories, curtailed the offences that can be investigated, and removed all the regional directors of the investigative branch. Now, no polluter can be prosecuted, anywhere in the province, without the permission of the Toronto powers that be.
As a practical matter, most polluters have little or nothing to fear – except Environmental Bureau of Investigation. The day after we laid charges against the City of Kingston, which had made no effort to stop polluting the Cataraqui River in decades, it sent earthmoving equipment to begin cleaning up the delinquent site. To avoid other prosecutions, Kingston also began cleaning up other areas, including a notorious coal tar site.
Across the province, municipalities got the message. The City of Belleville committed $40,000 to stop pollution from entering the Bay of Quinte, and others are also planning cleanup efforts.
Even the province got the message. We have laid four charges against the government of Ontario for pollution at the abandoned Deloro industrial site. These charges were the first ever brought by private citizens against the province. Following these charges, the province has taken long overdue protective actions. It is now posting signs and fencing the highly contaminated site to keep the public, as well as deer and other game, away from the site's arsenic and radioactive pollution. It has removed radioactive soil from the town, including the town's playground area. It has examined contamination levels in the town and identified some individuals with elevated urinary arsenic levels. It has also committed $18 million toward cleaning up the site, which is polluting the Moira River and Lake Ontario at the Bay of Quinte.
Our private prosecutions have had another important effect – they are putting pressure on the province to do its job and prosecute polluters on its own. In the Kingston case, after we had laid four charges, the province – in an unprecedented step – decided to lay an additional four and to join forces with us in prosecuting Kingston. In the Deloro case, the Attorney General of Ontario decided to prosecute the province with assistance from us and our lawyers. As a measure of the province's inability to enforce its environmental obligations, it had to authorize the purchase of Geiger counters for its environmental investigators. Although they were responsible for investigating radioactive contamination, before the Deloro charges, investigators had no way of measuring its existence!
Most encouraging of all, other environmental groups across the country are beginning to see that they can bring polluters to justice. Before EBI began prosecuting polluters, environmental texts by leading lawyers and academics said environmental groups would be hard pressed to acquire the meticulous expertise and credibility required to win in court. Instead, the thinking went, environmentalists should try to influence governments to better manage pollution. As a result, few environmental groups ever tried the criminal courts, and even then, they rarely expected to win. Now that we've shown environmental groups can win, environmentalists are becoming more aggressive, and polluters are becoming more fearful.
In response to a request from a prominent local environmentalist and professor of genetics, Joe Cummins, EBI became involved in an investigation of an Ontario coal tar site owned by the local electricity distribution utility London Hydro, on the Thames River in the centre of town. Since our involvement, the utility has committed to the cleanup, and has a fund of $100 million available to support the necessary work.
If you agree that polluters should be accountable to the courts instead of to politicians and that EBI is making a difference in protecting our environment, please support us with a generous tax-creditable donation. Because of our success, we are being flooded with requests for help from local environmental groups across the country, and we need all the help we can get.
Sincerely,
Mark Mattson
Executive Director and
Chief Investigator
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