Wendy Cook, Colin Isaacs, Derek Stephenson

Blue Box Recycling

By Wendy Cook, Colin Isaacs, Derek Stephenson
Every day, in cities and towns around the world, people step up to the curb with their Blue Boxes full of glass, cans, papers, plastic and other material for recycling. Listen to how Ontarians Wendy Cook, Colin Issacs and Derek Stephenson brought it to fruition.

The Blue Box recycling concept has been a huge success for the environment — and it all started in Ontario, more than a quarter century ago. Many people had a hand in getting recycling started in this province; three people who were intimately involved were Wendy Cook, Colin Isaacs, and Derek Stephenson.

They said no one would do it

Recycling was an idea that many experts said would never catch on. It was associated with hard times or shortages — for example, during World War II, Canadians were encouraged to save scraps of metal, rubber and paper (as well as plastics, which were still relatively new). In better economic times, it just seemed easier to throw things away. Industries did little to encourage recycling, usually because the market prices for recycled materials were too low to make recycling worthwhile. Plus cities and towns across Ontario had ample landfill and dump space. When Ontario's environmental movement began to gather steam in the early 1970s, today’s concerns regarding resource depletion, energy conservation, and climate change were not well understood by the general public. Nevertheless, for many people, throwing everything away simply seemed like the wrong thing to do. Accordingly, environmentalists came up with a practical waste management hierarchy, called the Three Rs — Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. One of the few exceptions to concerns about being wasteful at that time was Ontario’s system for handling glass soft drink bottles. To ensure that these bottles were returned and reused, consumers paid a deposit when they bought soft drinks in a glass bottle. The deposit money was returned to the consumer when bottles were brought back to the store (somewhat similar to today’s system in which beer, wine and liquor bottles are returned to The Beer Store). But this system started breaking down as different types of containers, such as large plastic bottles and steel cans, became more popular. The soft drink companies and retailers considered it inconvenient and expensive to put more deposits on more types of containers. A decision would have to be made. Ontarians could continue throwing everything into the landfills and be wasteful, or they could pay deposits on all kinds of materials, which would be complicated, expensive and hard to track. Some environmentalists thought of a third idea: these materials could be collected at curbside and RECYCLED! Many experts in both government and private sector said recycling would never work. The prevailing wisdom among professional waste management experts was that people at home and at work would not want to go to the trouble of sorting their own garbage. With this thought in mind, Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment planned to build its own mechanical garbage sorting facility. The idea was that this machinery would sort all the garbage into waste or recycling, and Ontarians could continue to simply throw everything away. Stephenson, Isaacs, Cook and other like-minded environmentalists thought this would be too expensive, would result in high levels of contamination in the recycled materials, and — perhaps most importantly — would not educate people about the need to make better use of our resources nor actively involve them in the solution. They also realized that they could not simply argue that recycling would work; they had to show it could be done.

Blue Boxes are born

In 1974, Stephenson and McGinnis put a small plan into action. They did pilot programs in several areas, including Toronto’s Beaches neighbourhood and the Canadian Forces Base at Borden. These programs had a very high participation rate. At one site, they collected so much recycled material that they bent the frame on one of the trucks. During the 1,500-household Kitchener pilot program that followed, they decided to distribute boxes in which homeowners could put their recyclables. At the time, the manufacturer only had blue coloured boxes, and so only blue boxes were provided to the home owners. Right away, participation was 85 per cent. Pretty soon, people who didn't get Blue Boxes started asking for them, and the program was expanded to all of Kitchener. In 1981, the Minister of the Environment announced funding for municipalities to start blue box programs. After Mississauga joined Kitchener with its own blue box program in 1986, recycling took off, expanding to Toronto, across Ontario and to pilot programs in 16 cities around the world by the end of the 1980s. Even by the end of 1988, a million households in Ontario were recycling. Today, more than 95 per cent of Ontario households have access to blue boxes.

What happens to the collected materials?

Garbage collection in Ontario is managed by municipalities, which either employ their own staff, contract collection to a private company, or combine both methods (as is done in Toronto). Collection trucks are often now equipped to take different types of materials in separate compartments — there’s one for plastics and metal, one for paper products, and so on. The trucks take their haul to sorting centres, where they are processed (further segregated, compressed and baled). Organic (compostable) materials are usually collected in separate trucks and taken to composting facilities. From the sorting centres, the recyclable materials are marketed to companies that can reuse them. Today’s paper industry, for example, uses large amounts of recycled paper. Currently, Ontario’s Blue Box program is overseen by the Waste Diversion Organization, a stand-alone government agency. Stewardship Ontario (a not-for-profit agency funded by Ontario-based brand owners, first importers or manufacturers of the products and packaging materials) manages the industry-funding component of the programs. In addition to operating the Blue Box financing program, Stewardship Ontario also manages Orange Drop, a recycling and safe disposal program for hazardous or special waste. The result of more than a generation of effort on recycling is a big success — a made-in-Ontario solution that has grown hand-in-hand with the environmental movement and became a recycling model for the rest of the world.
Rob Leverty, Cecil Louis and Ron Reid

Protecting the Niagara Escarpment

By Rob Leverty, Cecil Louis and Ron Reid
From Queenston on the Niagara River to Tobermory on the tip of the Bruce Peninsula, Ontario is blessed with the Niagara Escarpment. Rob, Cecil and Ron tell stories about the struggles to protect the Escarpment from development.

The Niagara Escarpment, a 450 million-year formation that dominates the landscape in the most populated and densely developed part of Canada. It’s a much-loved wonderland — a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve with abundant forests, farms, wetlands, recreation areas, hiking trails (including the Bruce Trail), historic sites, scenic villages and towns. The Escarpment’s rich ecosystems support 300 bird species, 53 mammals, 36 reptiles and amphibians, 90 fish and 100 varieties of special interest plant life, including 37 types of wild orchids. The Escarpment area is, rich with dolostone, sand, and gravel - the perfect material to quarry for building roads and for construction. In the early 1960s, as southern Ontario was growing, developers and aggregate operators targeted the Escarpment as an ideal source of building material. Meanwhile, Escarpment area farmland was becoming a magnet for residential subdivision development. As these problems escalated, citizens, the provincial government and environmental groups became concerned. Three people caught up in the early struggles to preserve the Niagara Escarpment were Cecil Louis, who was working for the Ontario government as a planner at the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Ron Reid, a naturalist on the staff of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists (FON) and Rob Leverty who became the Executive Director of the Coalition on the Niagara Escarpment (CONE), an organization formed by the FON and other concerned environmentalists to protect the Escarpment. The Political Situation in the 1960s and 70s The Ontario government in the 1960s and 1970s (like all Ontario governments since), was seeking to balance explosive growth in southern Ontario with the need to protect and preserve green space, and the Niagara Escarpment was top of mind. In 1967, then-Premier John Robarts commissioned Len Gertler from the University of Waterloo to write a report with recommendations on how to protect the Escarpment. Gertler took an unusual, almost revolutionary approach to planning for the Escarpment. His report came out before environmentalism and ecosystems were household words, yet it recommended protecting large parts of the Escarpment from development, with decisions to be made by an appointed group. This represented new thinking on two levels. Up to the late 1960s land use planning was left largely to local governments, which tended to favour development to expand their tax bases. Gertler called for regional planning that looked at what would be best for the whole province. He implied in his report that a feature like the Niagara Escarpment clearly transcended municipal boundaries, thus requiring provincial level planning. The other element of the new thinking was that the Escarpment should be protected because of its beautiful landscapes. Until then, it was not customary for governments to attach too much value to natural beauty, other than creating an occasional new park. In 1973, the Ontario government, headed by William Davis, who succeeded John Robarts as premier, moved forward with adopting the planning report by passing legislation to protect the Niagara Escarpment – the Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act (“the Act”). Premier Davis also set up the 17-member Niagara Escarpment Commission to prepare a Niagara Escarpment Plan, and to decide what development would be allowed in the area. After the Act was passed, the battle to protect the Escarpment began in earnest, and it was long and intense. Developers, aggregate companies, landowners and some municipal governments were up in arms over the restrictions that were put in place under the Act, so they lobbied hard to soften those restrictions as much as possible. This battle lasted over many years, and became one of the biggest public struggles over the environment that ever took place in Ontario. It was constantly in the media and was mentioned all around Ontario. Post-Niagara Escarpment Act The opposition caused by the passing of the Act led to a counter protest by environmentalists at Queen’s Park in 1978, followed by the formation of the CONE. Its matriarch was Lyn MacMillan, and other members included Ron Reid, along with the Canadian Environmental Law Association, the Canadian Nature Federation, Pollution Probe and the citizen-led Foundation for Aggregate Studies. CONE’s first test was to fight the construction of a proposed executive retreat to be built at the Forks of the Credit River on the Escarpment. MacMillan deployed her extensive network of contacts to arrange a meeting with then-Premier Davis. The goal was to persuade him to boost the funding available to buy up ecologically sensitive areas so they could be protected. Premier Davis finally committed $25 million to land protection. . Over the years (before and after the Act became law), all three parties in the Ontario Legislature have officially supported the Escarpment legislation and protection policies The late NDP MPP Mel Swart was particularly supportive of the Escarpment. Other supportive Members of the Ontario Legislative Assembly were Conservative MPP Norm Sterling, Liberal MPP Jim Bradley and NDP MPP Ruth Grier. Sterling, Bradley and Grier also served as Ministers responsible for the Niagara Escarpment Plan. The Niagara Escarpment Today Under the Act, the Niagara Escarpment Plan was approved by Cabinet in 1985, setting out detailed land use policies l. It was t updated in 1990 and again in1995, as required by the Act. The next review will take place in 2015. Today, developers and aggregate companies remain aggressive in their efforts to gain approval for projects in the Niagara Escarpment. It is the job of the Niagara Escarpment Commission to review every application. The Commission typically receives about 550 permit applications each year; it approves about 90 per cent of these, after ensuring that the proposals are in conformity with the policies of the plan, that are designed to keep the Escarpment protected. The result today is a remarkable, environmentally protected area within easy reach of millions of Ontarians and visitors. Every year, some 400,000 visitors come to the Escarpment, thanks to the foresight of the Ontario provincial government, and the consistent support of the many members of the general public acting as part of, or in concert with, Coalition on the Niagara Escarpment.
Jim Robb, Cathy Gregorio and Lois James

Protecting the Rouge River: A Priceless Watershed

By Jim Robb, Cathy Gregorio and Lois James
Are you a friend of the Rouge? These days it’s hard not to be, if you know about this amazing ecosystem teeming with rare and endangered wildlife, right in the Greater Toronto Area. Our guests talk about the road blocks they faced in saving the Rouge Valley system.

Rouge Park (The Rouge) is a magnificent semi-wilderness area nestled within Canada’s most populous region. It covers more than 45 square kilometres and has two National Historic Sites, including a significant First Nation village site and an old portage route. The Rouge is so ecologically important that it’s on the way to becoming Canada’s first Urban National Park — a national park that will be accessible by public transit. Saving the Rouge ecosystem has been a long journey, driven by the hard work of many environmental and community groups such as Save the Rouge Valley System (SRVS), which mobilized people to support the creation of Rouge Park; and Friends of the Rouge Watershed, which developed programs and activities so people can enjoy, learn about, and help restore the ecological health of the Park and watershed. Today, Friends of the Rouge Watershed still works to protect and restore the beautiful Rouge Park. Each year, more than 10,000 school children visit the Rouge, studying its ecosystems, and perhaps most importantly, enjoying nature just minutes away from downtown and suburban neighbourhoods. Early Days The struggle to save the Rouge began in the 1970s, when Toronto was expanding with never-ending development. During that time, Torontonians noticed that there was still beautiful wilderness tucked into the city’s northeast corner. In 1975, local citizens formed SRVS to advocate for better planning and protection for the Rouge River and the valley system. In 1967, a rich wetland northeast of Meadowvale Road and Hwy 401 was set aside for Canada’s Centennial. Even with this commemorative event, developers came and simply drained the wetland. To make matters worse, between 1965 and 1983, there was an active landfill near the Rouge Valley, east of the Toronto Zoo site. Anyone who lived there at that time will remember lots of garbage trucks, seagulls, dust, odours and rats. The growing threats of urban sprawl spurred the SRVS. Developer after developer seemed to come and gobble up wetlands and forests. More needed to be done. Building Local Political Support   In 1987, Joyce Trimmer, a Scarborough city councillor (later mayor of that city before it was amalgamated with Toronto), attended a SRVS meeting. Trimmer gave tough but crucial feedback helping focus the group and its goals. The group’s first political experience was not encouraging. In the mid-1980s, they built public awareness of plans to develop 5,000 acres of land around the Rouge River Valley. But when Scarborough City Council voted, only Trimmer and one other councillor, Edith Montgomery, supported protecting Scarborough Rouge lands. SRVS didn’t give up. Instead, they doubled their efforts to build a broad coalition of community, environmental and political groups, with public support. More than 1,000 people turned up for two Scarborough Council meetings. In 1988, Council voted to protect the 5,000 acres surrounding the Rouge Valley in northeast Toronto. SRVS volunteers knew that the river, which supports the health of the valley and watershed, was still imperiled. There were plans for an adjacent highway and a bigger landfill and developments. SRVS had an idea, an alternative to endless development — the creation of a protected Rouge Park. Another successful fight was the People or Planes campaign. In the 1970s, the provincial and federal governments purchased more than 30,000 acres by the Rouge River. The plan was to create a greenbelt surrounding a proposed international airport in North Pickering. In the end, the airport was not built, leaving most of these lands in public hands and potentially available for a Rouge Park. Meanwhile on the Federal and Provincial scene The Progressive Conservative (PC) government under then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, green for its time, was open to dialogue with activists. SRVS met with Pauline Browes, a PC Member of Parliament from Scarborough Centre, and the Waterfront Commissioner, David Crombie. Together, they gained support for the Rouge Valley from the federal government and then-Environment Minister Tom McMillan. The Save the Rouge campaign was political but non-partisan. In addition to Browes and the PCs, the Ontario Liberal government, under then-Premier David Peterson and Environment Minister Jim Bradley, also supported protecting the Rouge. Bradley’s key aides Gary Gallon, Mark Rudolph, Sarah Rang and David Oved made sure the issue had the government’s attention. In March 1990, Premier Peterson announced the province's plans to create a 10,500-acre (4,250-hectare) Rouge Park, from Lake Ontario to the Oak Ridges Moraine — almost exactly what SRVS asked for. PC Premier Mike Harris’ government added land to the park in 2001, and in 2005 Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government created the Greenbelt, which placed Rouge Park as "main ecological link" between Lake Ontario and the Oak Ridges Moraine. Bob Hunter, the crusading environment reporter and a founder of Greenpeace, had encouraged SRVS volunteers to never give up, but he also told them to have a healthy dose of cynicism about government announcements. “If you’re not cynical, you’re not paying attention,” he said. His point: the battle for environmental protection does not end, it requires eternal activism. In memory of Bob Hunter, Premier McGuinty created Bob Hunter Memorial Park in 2006.
Dennis Wood, Alan Levy, Heather Mitchell, Clifford Lax

Birth of a Practice: Environmental Lawyer

By Dennis Wood, Alan Levy, Heather Mitchell, Clifford Lax
In the early 1970s, a new legal specialist – the environmental lawyer – was starting to appear on the Ontario scene. Our guests in this story were some of Ontario's first environmental lawyers. Listen to learn about their involvement in environmental law and how it evolved to what it is today.

In the early 1970s, a new legal specialist – the environmental  lawyer – was starting to appear on the Ontario scene. There had been a variety of conservation, sanitation and water protection laws on the books for some time. However, the 70s heralded the introduction of the first dedicated environmental laws designed specifically to address air and water pollutants, noise, wastes, and a wide range of other contaminants. As the body of environmental law began to grow, so did the demand for environmental lawyers.
Until the 1970s, “the practice of environmental law in the private sector was non-existent. There just wasn’t anything to support it.”
Ontario’s Environmental Protection Act was enacted in 1971, followed by the Environmental Assessment Act in 1976, while Ottawa passed the Environmental Contaminants Act in 1975. Each of these new laws, and the regulations made under them, imposed stricter environmental responsibilities on Ontario’s resource companies, manufacturers, utilities and other private and public sector entities. These laws also contained enforcement powers and set fines and other penalties for polluters. However, prosecution was often the ‘last resort’ of the Ministry of Environment. Many of the early enforcement officers were drawn from the very industries they were hired to oversee. While they were able to negotiate some effective pollution reduction programs, the Ministry was not particularly aggressive in prosecuting companies or individuals that did not meet the province’s new environmental standards. Meanwhile, the public was growing more concerned about a host of emerging environmental problems: PCBs, acid rain, hazardous waste, lead smelters, dioxins and furans, mercury pollution, the “death” of Lake Erie, Love Canal … the list went on and on.  As a result, federal and provincial regulators were soon forced to take a more proactive stance in the enforcement of the environmental rules. The Ontario Ministry of the Environment established its own Investigations and Enforcement Branch in 1985 to investigate major spills, hazwaste problems and industrial pollution, and to charge and prosecute those who broke the environmental law. Soon afterwards, a series of complex environmental assessments were launched for major projects proposed by the public sector, Crown corporations and municipalities. These twin developments made both industry and municipalities ‘sit up and pay attention.’ Once they understood the looming legal liabilities, they looked for their own environmental lawyers to explain their regulatory obligations and to defend their legal rights.
“There was a kind of an arc here [in the development of private environmental law practice]. There was the 70s when we were incubating ideas, through the gathering momentum of the early 80s, to the late 80s and early 90s when there was a very active [environmental] practice.” (Law Tape 2, 2:30-3:00)
This new age of environmental law was interrupted temporarily by the economic downturn of the early to mid-1990s and the subsequent governmental response. . Some environmental programs were trimmed by cost-conscious governments in fear that such programs would drive business away. Major assessment hearings were cancelled in response to complaints about the cost and delay of environmental ‘red tape,’ and much of the intervenor funding that had sustained NGO participation was discontinued. While subsequent governments have showed a renewed enthusiasm for environmental initiatives, the 1970s and 80s marked the heyday of legal reform. At the same time, many technical concerns had devolved from lawyers to environmental engineers. These “qualified professionals” could guide clients through the increasingly complex world of environmental approvals, contaminated site remediation and regulatory compliance. Detailed and prescriptive environmental regulations, permit-by-rule systems and class environmental assessment processes spawned a whole new industry of environmental consultants who now handle much of the work that formerly went to law firms. Today, environmental law is firmly established as its own distinctive practice backed by a growing body of case law and precedents, and supported by an ever more complex regime of federal, provincial and municipal regulations, standards and by-laws. A number of Canadian universities offer environmental law programs, including York, Toronto, Dalhousie, Ottawa, Calgary and British Columbia. Both the Canadian and Ontario Bar Associations have established special sections to promote legal reform, professional development and education the areas of environmental, energy and resources law. Each federal, provincial and territorial environmental agency now maintains its own roster of environmental lawyers to handle prosecutions, support compliance, and draft acts, regulations, approvals and orders. For example, the Legal Services Branch of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment currently employs more than 50 lawyers, articling students and paralegals, constituting the largest single team of environmental lawyers in Canada. Most large law firms have environmental specialists on staff, while some lawyers have set up ‘boutique’ environmental law firms that may also cover related disciplines, like Aboriginal, energy, resource development and real estate law.  Finally, a handful of environmental lawyers work with environmental and First Nations groups, residents associations and individuals to advocate regulatory amendments, undertake private prosecutions, and enable client participation in natural resource and land development approval processes.
Toby Vigod, Rick Findlay, Doug Draper

Love Canal’s bigger toxic brother: The Niagara River

By Toby Vigod, Rick Findlay, Doug Draper
Love Canal has become synonymous with irresponsible waste disposal. Between 1947 and 1952, the Hooker Chemical Company dumped an estimated 19,700 tonnes of chemical waste into an abandoned canal which ran through its property in the Love Canal suburb of Niagara Falls, NY.

Between 1947 and 1952, the Hooker Chemical Company – now Occidental Chemical Corporation – dumped an estimated 19,700 tonnes of chemical waste into an abandoned canal which ran through its property in the Love Canal suburb of Niagara Falls, New York. The company buried thousands of 55-gallon metal drums filled with solvents, chlorinated hydrocarbons, acids, caustics and other toxic materials on the site and covered them with a clay cap, complying with the rudimentary environmental standards of the day. Other industrial generators, including the US Army, also dumped their chemical wastes in the Love Canal. By 1953, the site was full and Hooker Chemical sold the property to the local school board for the token amount of one dollar. Despite warnings that the clay cap should not be disturbed or the site excavated, storm sewers, roads and utilities were installed, two elementary schools were erected and hundreds of homes were built over (or adjacent to) the slowly deteriorating drums of highly toxic waste. In June 1958, the first reports of children developing skin rashes after playing on the property appeared. By 1976, residents were complaining of chemical odours, birth defects, miscarriages, respiratory ailments and other serious health problems. The local press and, soon afterwards, the national media picked up the story. And following the airing of a critical and widely-viewed documentary, The Killing Ground, on national television, federal regulatory authorities began to take action.
It was so dramatic. [The wastes in Love Canal] literally destroyed the neighbourhood ... [There were] swing sets, pools in the backyard – it could be your neighbourhood – literally melting in this toxic pool.
On May 21, 1980, US President Jimmy Carter declared a federal health emergency and, in several phases, residents were evacuated from more than 900 homes in a 10-block area surrounding the canal. The notoriety of the Love Canal spurred the passage of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) in 1980 and the establishment of the Superfund remediation program which expanded to cover the excavation and containment of hazardous wastes leaking from hundreds of abandoned dump sites across the US. The Love Canal disposal site was covered by a synthetic liner and clay cap and surrounded by a barrier drainage system. Contamination from the site is still being controlled by a leachate collection and treatment facility. While the New York State Health Commissioner eventually allowed 250 of the abandoned homes to be resettled, hundreds more were demolished and a 16-hectare portion of the site remains empty and overgrown, locked behind security fences to this day. In September 2004, the Love Canal was removed from the Superfund’s National Priority List (NPL). Hyde Park, the “seeping giant” While the Love Canal got most of the headlines, Hooker Chemical continued to dump another 72,600 tonnes of chemical waste – four times more than what went into Love Canal – down the road into the six-hectare Hyde Park Landfill from 1953 to 1975. These were, primarily, chlorobenzenes, toluenes, halogenated aliphatics, and 2,4,5-trichlorophenol still bottoms. While all these compounds pose a serious threat to human health, the still bottoms were contaminated with up to 1.45 tonnes of dioxin, widely acknowledged as one of the most toxic chemicals known to science. That made Hyde Park the single largest deposit of dioxins in the world. And those dangerous chemical wastes were not staying put. Some 600 metres to the northeast of the site, the Niagara River flows north towards Lake Ontario, the primary source of drinking water for millions of people on both sides of the border. The ominously named Bloody Run Creek flowed through the landfill, then under a neighbouring industrial property and through a storm sewer that emptied into the Niagara Gorge. In addition, contaminated groundwater moved through both the glacial overburden and the heavily fractured dolomite bedrock outwards and downwards towards the Niagara Gorge. In 1979, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sued Hooker Chemical to force the company to remediate the site. Two Canadian environmental groups – Operation Clean Niagara and Pollution Probe, both represented by the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) – intervened as amici curiae or “friends of the court” in the federal district court that hammered out and ratified the private settlement agreement between the company and the EPA in April 1982.
Hyde Park was just one [of hundreds of toxic waste sites in the Niagara Frontier], and perhaps one of the less really scary ones in a sense – it was in a hole in the ground and partly contained. There were others that were literally on the banks of the [Niagara] river.
The Hyde Park site was listed on the NPL in September 1983. An aquifer survey, completed that year, defined the extent of contamination and a final remedial action plan was approved by the court in 1986. To date, a landfill cap installed in 1994 has decreased leachate generation, more than 1.1 million litres of dense oily liquids and some 23,000 cubic metres of contaminated sediment have been removed and treated, and purge wells have been installed to contain contaminant plumes and prevent wastes from seeping into the Niagara River. Operation and maintenance of the groundwater removal and treatment systems will continue for the next 30 years. The Hyde Park case sparked a lot of political interest at both the federal and provincial levels, as well as the development of some analytical tools still used today to track minute amounts of extremely toxic chemicals through the environment.
There was quite a mobilization of resources in Canada from a scientific and technical point of view. The Canada Centre for Inland Waters in Burlington … developed some really innovative research techniques for managing [tracking and monitoring] very small amounts of toxic chlorinated types of compounds.
The Hyde Park Landfill file is still active Today, most of the chemical wastes buried across the Niagara Frontier are still lying in the ground, with the capacity to remain toxic for hundreds of years, if not forever. In September 2012, CELA on behalf of the cross-border environmental coalition Great Lakes United wrote to the Emergency and Remedial Response Division of the US EPA to oppose the deletion of the Hooker Hyde Park Superfund site from the National Priorities List. While deletion from the NPL does not preclude the EPA from conducting additional waste “removal” activities at the site, the Agency would be barred from conducting more extensive “remedial” activities, such as such as groundwater treatment. According to CELA counsel Joseph F. Castrilli, “Many of the key reasons that necessitated Hyde Park being listed on the NPL in the 1980s continue to exist today. The chemicals are still there, they are still hazardous and, because of the remedial action strategy chosen, they require robust environmental management essentially forever.” For those reasons, Great Lake United opposes the deletion of Hyde Park from the NPL.
Dennis Caplice, Victor Rudik, Wayne Scott

Ministry of the Environment: Part One

By Dennis Caplice, Victor Rudik, Wayne Scott
It wasn’t that long ago in Ontario when there was no Ministry of the Environment. But it seems like we’ve moved ahead by light years.

Before the Ministry was created in 1972, pollution control was left to a hodgepodge of municipal and provincial regulations and agencies. Industries’ answer to pollution was to build higher smokestacks and longer outflow pipes to spread their emissions and discharges farther away — out of sight and out of mind, but unfortunately, not out of the environment. Farmers could go into the waste disposal business by renting out land, allowing in dumpsters and covering the garbage with dirt. Sewage treatment plants needed to be upgraded, flood plains needed to be controlled, air quality needed attention. It all needed to be coordinated. There weren’t consistent patterns as to how decisions were made about the environment. For example, it was a major event when then-Premier William Davis stopped construction on Toronto’s Spadina Expressway in 1971, but it was done by Cabinet order (really his own order) — none of the legal challenges brought by neighbourhood groups had worked. It’s not that people were unaware. The idea that something different had to be done in Ontario to deal with the environment began to percolate years before the Ministry came into being and started to do its work. In 1970, George Kerr, who would later become Ontario’s first Environment Minister, referred to polluters as “thieves”. This was strong language at the time. There was still reluctance even consider to tough environmental controls. People in those days spoke about raising their “consciousness”, and this actually started to happen. On April 22, 1970, the world’s first Earth Day, MPPs handed out phosphate-free detergent to people in the street, explaining how it was better for the water. That same day, then-Premier John Robarts (Davis’ predecessor) told Ontarians that the time would come when governments may need to forbid certain types of development if it meant protecting the environment — even if that meant giving up tax revenues. It was controversial. “While I do not relish the idea, I am convinced that we, the province and municipalities, must institute very firm controls in some areas of Ontario,” he warned. This was a bold enough warning to merit front-page coverage in the Toronto Star, which noted that the Premier’s words meant something almost shocking: “Industries might not always be able to establish where they want to.” Yet while demonstrators in Washington, Toronto and around the world marched that day to draw attention to the environment, the legal and governmental mechanisms to act on Robarts’ ideas were still a good two years away. And the tools that we now use — the regulatory and review system, was even farther off. The Ministry of the Environment came to life in 1972, with Kerr as Minister. But it wasn’t until two years later, in the 1974 Throne Speech, that the government announced it was bringing in a new Environmental Assessment Act. This meant that for the first time, there would be a formal way to review the impact of new proposals on our land and water. It fell to senior government officials — the bureaucrats — to make sense of what was then a new, but important way of looking at our surroundings in Ontario. There was resistance — not everyone in government or in industry wanted an Environment Ministry, and even today, some people don’t like environmental assessments — and there was a lot to learn. Officials would visit industries to inspect them and be asked: “Why are you here?” And from the other side, members of the public would ask: “Why aren’t you doing more?” The new Environmental Assessment Act, which became law in 1975, provided the framework for, as it says, “the betterment of the people of the whole or any part of Ontario by providing for the protection, conservation and wise management in Ontario of the environment.” As with many effective laws, it draws criticism from both sides — opponents say it slows development and industry and proponents say it could offer more protection. What the Act, and the Ministry, do seek to achieve is to provide the method and the process to act on changing thinking about our environment. There have been significant achievements. For example, in 1994 a Class (comprehensive, across-the-board) Environmental Assessment of timber management led to considerable rethinking about how we manage our Crown forests, putting more focus than before on sustainability. This has led to a wider consensus — and some formal accords — to make our forests more sustainable. Other environmental assessments under the act have tackled waste management, transmission lines and electricity supply. The Ministry, meanwhile also led the way in many areas, with a comprehensive program to combat acid rain, a watershed-wide management plan for Lake Simcoe and its wide-ranging sewage abatement program for municipalities and industries across the province. Is it perfect? Perfection may always be elusive, and there’s still a lot to learn. But it is progress — measurable pollution prevention, real enforcement and a framework for assessing environmental impact. Listen to the stories of the Ministry’s pioneers and how they worked to make Ontario’s Environment Ministry come to life.
David Estrin, John Swaigen, Joseph Castrilli

Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA)

By David Estrin, John Swaigen, Joseph Castrilli
The renowned Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) was established in 1970 to use existing laws to protect the environment and to advocate environmental law reforms. Today, CELA is a non-profit organization funded by Legal Aid Ontario.

The year 1970 was pivotal for the slow evolving history of environmental regulation in Ontario. That was when a group of environmental activists and law professors, young lawyers and articling students gathered in an unused laboratory on the campus of the University of Toronto to form the Environmental Law Association (the "Canadian" would be added a few years later). The goal was to create a a public interest law clinic that could handle the heavy legal slogging for the newly-emerging environmental activists and groups fighting to control the most egregious polluters, safeguard air and water quality, and preserve natural areas.
[We had the idea that we] could use environmental laws to prevent pollution, to improve society and, to the extent that we had any environmental laws in those days, to try to enforce them.
In those early, formative days of environmental law, long before provincial and federal governments would vow to get tough on polluters, CELA undertook the first prosecutions for noise pollution in Ontario, pushed for public consultation on the first certificates of approval, and rallied support for broader, more inclusive environmental legislation. CELA also attracted a roster of prominent lawyers from private practice, including a future member of the Supreme Court, who would volunteer to argue groundbreaking cases. Over the years, CELA has been instrumental in the development and passage of Ontario's Environmental Assessment Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Environmental Bill of Rights. The association was also known for fighting and (mostly) winning a series of precedent-setting court cases. CELA lawyers
  • defended the Hudson, Quebec, municipal bylaw outlawing the use of cosmetic pesticides on private property
  • won a ruling in the Supreme Court that higher life forms cannot be patented in Canada
  • opposed both the proposed Adams Mine mega-dump and plans by Lafarge Canada to burn tires and other waste in an Ontario cement plant.
Following several precarious years of unpredictable and unstable funding in the early 1970s – where the organization's limited financial backing was supplemented by personal loan guarantees assumed by several of CELA's directors and individual supporters – the association was finally recognized by Legal Aid Ontario as a specialty community legal clinic. This allowed the organization to hire support staff, move into more permanent offices, and retain some of the expert counsel and researchers it had been training over the years. From the beginning, CELA helped establish the discipline of environmental law and their influence is visible even today. They established a Resource Library for the Environment and the Law, provided a hands-on training ground for hundreds of articling students, researchers, staff lawyers and directors who have gone on to play influential roles in the public and private sector, and produced resources and materials that environmental lawyers continue to rely on. The Canadian Environmental Law Reports, now circulated by Carswell, is still the country's primary environmental law reporting service, while 1974's encyclopedic Environment on Trial became the de facto textbook for the new courses in environmental law that started to appear law school calendars across the country. CELA  established the Canadian Environmental Law Research Foundation (CELRF), which was able to obtain federal charitable status and could raise funds to support the legal clinic, while also undertaking arm's-length law reform projects and research grants. CELRF later evolved into the Canadian Institute of Environmental Law and Policy (CIELAP). CELA also launched the first Canadian Environmental Defence Fund (now called Environmental Defence Canada).  
Hap Wilson, Brian Back, Amber Ellis

Temagami, Old Growth and Canoeing

By Hap Wilson, Brian Back, Amber Ellis
During the Red Squirrel Road blockade, Brian Back was buried in the ground up to the neck. Bob Rae, stunned as he walked by, whispered to him, "are you alright?" Listen to the story to hear about how old-growth forests and some of Ontario's wilderness canoeing areas were protected.

The Temagami area in northern Ontario holds one of the largest old growth red and white pine forests in the world. Old growth forests are rare in Ontario due to past extensive logging, but Temagami is   still standing, thanks to Hap Wilson, Brian Back, Amber Ellis and many others who fought hard to preserve the ancient ecosystem.
I remember fights in [the district manager]'s office ... The door was closed and you'd hear screaming, then you'd hear things hit the wall. This was what it was like there. It was a circus.
The Temagami story begins with Hap Wilson: canoeist, outfitter, artist, environment enthusiast, and author of many wilderness guidebooks. As a park ranger from 1976 to 1984, Wilson surveyed and published Temagami’s first, and very popular, Canoe Routes guidebook. This helped lead to a greater awareness of the need for wilderness protection, and opened up the area to outsiders who became advocates through discovery. However, logging and road building were still allowed. Things heated up when a district manager from MNR started illegally clearing land for the Red Squirrel Road in the fall of 1984. Hap was the first to learn about the road clearing, and quickly worked with his supervisor, Reg Sinclair from the Ministry of Natural Resources to "block" particular logging operations scheduled for critical areas by designing hiking trails or new canoe routespushing the development into the review process. In July of 1985, environmentalist Terry Grave and lawyer Owen Smith requested an Environmental Assessment (EA), and lobbied it hard through Queen’s Park for three months. In September 1985, the government finally agreed to conduct the EA. One year later, it was released, but the government had altered the document and removed the author’s name, making it unusable. Nevertheless, the EA was critical to delaying logging and building of the Red Squirrel Road, and gave time for Terry, Hap and activist Brian Back to get organized. In 1986, they formed the Temagami Wilderness Society, with the mission to keep Temagami wild. One of the first things the Society did was to identify a reason for preserving the wilderness in Temagami. In 1988, they commissioned Peter Quinby, a forest-ecology doctorate, to study the Temagami forest. Quinby confirmed the existence of old growth in Temagami – endangered from logging in Eastern Canada.  With their cause strengthened by this finding, the Temagami Wilderness Society distributed brochures featuring photos of Temagami, brought people to the area, and campaigned to stop the area from being developed. For several years, the Temagami Wilderness Society did their best to stop the logging of old growth,  working hard at public relations and fundraising. However, nothing seemed to stop those who were determined to build the road.  In 1989, the government resumed building the Red Squirrel Road through the newly developed Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Wilderness Park. Finally, the Society decided to set up a blockade at the Red Squirrel Road, the first of its kind in Eastern Canada. You can see the photos of the blockade in the photo section of this story. Today, Temagami is one of the remaining wilderness canoeing areas in the world, as logging and development continue to endanger these precious areas. In Ontario, we are lucky to have legislation and environmental groups to protect these precious landscapes and ecosystems. It is important for the next generation to keep it that way. Listen to the story to learn about the blockade, how Brian Back was buried in the ground, how former Ontario Premier Bob Rae (leader of the opposition at the time) was arrested, and learn what happened to Temagami and the Temagami Wilderness Society.
Linda McCaffrey, Minoo Khoorshed, Jerry Herlihy

First Lawyers of MOE

By Linda McCaffrey, Minoo Khoorshed, Jerry Herlihy
Our guests talk about environmental cases they were involved in, many of which helped shape Ontario's environmental law.

Ontario's Ministry of the Environment established their legal branch in July, 1972. Linda McCaffrey was hired as a lawyer in October that year and worked with director, Neil Mulvaney, to establish the foundation of the branch. Shortly after, Minoo Khoorshed and Jerry Herlihy joined. In this story, they talked about how and why they became lawyers at the MOE, the cases they were involved in and their views of the legal branch today. As you listen to the story, you may not be familiar with some legal terms. Here are some references that may be able to help: Adjournment: Suspending a legal proceeding to a future time. Arbitration: A method of alternative dispute resolution in which the parties agree to submit their dispute to a neutral person or group for a decision. Civil liability: potential responsibility for payment of damages (as distinguished from criminal liability). Disclosure: The release of documents and other information about a person or entity. Due diligence: A legal defense against conviction or civil liability where the defendant establishes that it took all reasonable steps to prevent committing an offence or causing harm to other persons or their property. IEB: the Ontario Ministry of the Environment's Investigation and Enforcement Branch Motion: In litigation, a formal request to a court for a specific action. Opined: Held or expressed an opinion. Prosecution: The act of pursuing a criminal lawsuit against an offender, or, the party pursuing the criminal prosecution. Liability: A legally enforceable obligation.
Monte Hummel, Brian Kelly, Peter Middleton

Pollution Probe

By Monte Hummel, Brian Kelly, Peter Middleton
Caption: John Swaigen and Anne Wordsworth (left) talk to Pollution Probe co-founders Monte Hummel, Peter Middleton and Brian Kelly (right) talk history of Pollution Probe at the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) office

On a cold February evening in 1969, several hundred students and professors gathered on the campus of the University of Toronto to watch and discuss The Air of Death, an exposé of industrial pollution that had aired on CBC television. The mood was grim. Ontario had just completed a controversial, one-sided inquiry that challenged many of the documentary’s findings. So when one of the companies portrayed in the program complained to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that the story was biased and inaccurate, a few of those students approached zoology professor Dr. Donald Chant and asked for his help in preparing a formal brief to present to the Commission. Dr. Chant agreed, the group appeared before the CRTC, the producers of the film were exonerated and, on March 1, 1969, Pollution Probe was born. In its first years, Pollution Probe was an exuberant, attention-grabbing, loosely-structured collective of young environmental activists. Predating both Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment , the federal Department of the Environment and most of the country’s environmental laws and regulations, Probe’s primary mission was to raise public awareness and push for change. When concern grew over massive algal blooms in a “dying” Lake Erie, a couple of Probe staffers spent Christmas holidays testing phosphate levels in a variety of detergents and cleaning products. After the results aired on a prominent public affairs show, more than 7,000 letters poured into Probe’s makeshift offices asking for copies of their research. “We hit the sweet spot,” says Probe co-founder Brian Kelly, “Because pollution was a concern, people wanted to do something. They wanted information. We filled that void.” In addition to pollution problems, Probe teams tackled a series of complex energy, urban development and garbage issues. Admittedly some campaigns were more guerilla theatre than science. Probers dumped bags of roadside litter on the steps of the Ontario Legislature and later hosted a “garbage picnic” with Bob the Rat. They mailed back waste packaging to manufacturers as part of the “Boomerang” campaign, while the “Pop Posse” reported retail stores that didn’t stock returnable pop. They even covertly shipped a succession of dead animals to the U.S. consulate in the days leading up to the underground testing of nuclear devices on Amchitka in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. While violence and vandalism had no place in their tactics, the early Probers firmly believed that “humour never hurts.” Neither did public education. Probe’s DO IT! campaign equipped Ontario teachers with the first environmental education kits to teach students about air and water pollution, noise, litter and pesticides. Travelling caravans criss-crossed the province each summer, teaching residents how to organize grassroots projects and spreading the word on recycling, household toxics and acid rain. The media were bombarded with press releases, politicians inundated with briefs and policy papers, and the public supplied with a constant stream of topical fact sheets, brochures and booklets. By the end of the 70s, Probe’s lobbying was becoming a little more sophisticated. “Today’s grade eight student knows as much about pollution as Probe did in 1969,” said Dr. Chant on the 10th anniversary of Pollution Probe. The days of theatrical stunts and demonstrations were fading. The public, media and decision makers expected solid research underpinned by scientific data and technical expertise. Probe researchers were also looking beyond the old-time contamination problems – belching smokestacks and dead fish floating down murky rivers – into the root causes of environmental degradation. They were now wrestling with the hidden impacts of toxic chemicals, the economic benefits of a green economy, and the imperatives of a conserver society. In 1980, the organization moved from its long-time home on the U of T campus into Ecology House, a Victorian home retrofitted with the latest solar heating and energy saving techniques, a greywater system and a greenhouse. More than 10,000 visitors looking for green living ideas trooped through the doors of the urban conservation showplace in just the first year. In 1981, Profit from Pollution Prevention detailed hundreds of success stories – companies that were using production technologies in innovative ways to reduce, reuse or recycle wastes. In 1984, Probe helped negotiate the cleanup of toxic chemical dumpsites in New York State and, in 1986, pushed for the closure of the last garbage incinerators in southern Ontario. In 1989, the Green Consumer Guide, a compendium of alternative products and environmentally friendly household tips, became a Canadian bestseller and was quickly followed by the Canadian Junior Green Guide and the Green Kitchen Handbook. In the more than 40 years since the birth of Pollution Probe, literally thousands of researchers, volunteers, canvassers and supporters have passed through its offices. Some licked stamps or answered phones for an afternoon, some worked through the summer as interns or on special projects, and some worked on Probe campaigns for years. Many of those former Probers have toiled in the environmental business ever since, in government, in industry, in academia and in the non-profit sector. Today, Pollution Probe continues to work quietly behind the scenes on green transportation, water management and climate change issues.