Short Stuff: Lake Erie's Rights

The good people of Toledo, OH are leading the environmental pack by giving legal rights to Lake Erie to fight off polluters.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Ahoy, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck, and I am a born and raised Toledo
win So I am in a very peculiar position to
speak about this peculiar meaning special in every way, and
I get to show off my slack. Yeah you pink boy,

(00:24):
I'm gonna kick back and just listen. Did you ever
get that key to the city? No, I have not,
and it bothers me every night while I'm trying to sleep.
Weren't you offered or No? There was a Toledo and
I don't remember his name, but he was a dedicated stuff.
You should know listener some years back who said I
am going to get Josh the key to the city,
and you too. I believe um. He was working very

(00:47):
hard to make it happen, got in touch with some
local politicians I think was brushed off, and then you
know called it today. So that moment happens where like
you and I are standing at the hotel check in
and they look at you and they go, are you
going any two keys? And you look at me and
I'm like, I wouldn't mind a key? Sure, yeah, I
guess too. But but this will be on a podium

(01:09):
with the mayor. Well, maybe I think that you should
have the key and and cut with the giant scissors. Okay,
and I'll just be there and support you. Well either way.
I mean I would be more than happy to share
the key to the city with you. I mean everything
that we've done with stuff you should know we've done together.
So yeah, but I'm not but you could be an

(01:31):
honorary citizen too. Let's move on from this petty dispute. Wait,
wait a minute, I'm not done yet. All right, we
are talking about Toledo today because Toledo, my hometown, did
something pretty amazing a few years back, and as far
as I can tell, they are still very much working
on it. Right. I love this idea and spirit. The
Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature a k a.

(01:52):
GARN is a network of organizations and people from more
than a hundred different countries that are are actually pushing
for legals, bodies, and systems around the world to recognize
nature and ecosystems as having rights. Yes, which you're like, what,

(02:13):
that's stupid. Consider this. Corporations are considered artificial people under
the law. They have a lot of the same rights. Yeah,
they have a lot of the same rights as you
and me. So if corporations can have personal rights, why
shouldn't nature. It makes even more sense to me than
a corporation having personal rights. And that's kind of the

(02:33):
push and the the angle that people are coming from
is like, look, this thing is being harmed, and sometimes
it can be really difficult to show you have standing
which means you are being directly harmed by say, polluting
into like erie um. And it would be much easier
to like get something done through the courts if this

(02:56):
thing that was actually suffering the harm the body of waters,
say like like yerie had those rights, because then you
could see on its behalf in court. Yeah. I love
this idea, like where the ecosystem is the actual injured party,
but when it clearly is. But yeah, because it is
Ecuador has done this or that they were the first
country to recognize rights of nature in their actual constitution

(03:18):
in two thousand eight. Uh and it is quote it
means nature has quote the right to exist, persist, to
maintain and regenerate its vital cycles. It seems like a
no brainer. No, it really unforced. Nature has the right
to do that. Ye oh, Bolivia as well in two
thousand ten with their Universal Declaration of the Rights of

(03:40):
Mother Earth was adopted there, so that this is actually
happening at places in the world. Yeah, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Toledo,
Ohio basically are the leaders in this, and so the
the whole thing with Toledo started um after I think
in August of two thousand fourteen, there was a terrible

(04:02):
incident where there was a cyanobacteria algae bloom and Ciana
bacteria is very much toxic to humans, and it got
into the water intake crib uh in Lake Erie that
supplies Toledo with its um stock for the water that
it sends through its taps too people's homes, and for
three days, the people of Toledo could not bathe, they

(04:25):
had no water to drink, they couldn't cook, they had
no water all of a sudden for three days until
the water company could figure out what to do about this.
People are having across state lines to get bottled water.
It was a nightmare. It was a mess, and that
really prompted some people to get involved and be like, Okay,
enough is enough. That's those algae blooms are not supposed

(04:48):
to be happening there the result of irresponsible fertilizing practices
by local industrialized agricultural groups that are polluting the lake
through runoff, and we're all suffering from this. We need
to figure out what to do that's right. And we'll
take a break right now and talk about a great
toledo In an American named Marky Miller right after this. Well,

(05:10):
now we're on the road driving in your truck. Want
to learn a thing or two from Josh dam Chuck
stuff you should know, all right, all right, Josh Clark

(05:37):
one great Toledo win. Markey Miller another great toledo In. Yeah,
I think between me and Markey Miller, Markey Miller should
probably get the key to the city. Jamie far great
to lead. And Jamie Farr was really from Toledo, right, Yeah,
he really was. It wasn't just part of Klinger's character.
He really was. He always talked about Tony Pacos, which

(05:58):
is still around. I love it. So mar Key Miller
is a long time to Ledowin, who after this water
fiasco got fed up and started trying to get some answers,
went to the town hall meetings, said all the things
as a citizen that you can do and they like,
how can we, you know, make sure this doesn't happen again,
And they basically said, let's move forward about mitigation, but

(06:20):
we don't really want to talk about what caused this
in the first place, Like let's just kind of brush
that under the rug. And Markey Miller said, no, not
good enough yet yet. And so Markey Miller in her
late twenties started attending these meetings with and getting kind
of people kind of riled up on her side. And uh,
they named themselves the Toledo Wins for Safe Water. And

(06:42):
this eventually led to what's known as drawing up the
Lake Eerie Bill of Rights. Handful of people saying that
they're fed up and this lake, this exquisite, great lake,
actually needs to be protected with its own bill of rights. Yes, um,
And what one of the said things about Lake Erie
is like it used to be really bad off, like

(07:05):
it was not a thing that you want to swim in,
which coincidentally was the time when I was swimming in
Lake Erie as a kid. But I remember catching fish
and like some guy going past out to the lake
on his boat and my dad and I fishing on
this channel and him being like, do not eat that
like just throw it back. And I remember being like,

(07:25):
what is this guy talking about? My dad's like, yeah,
we really shouldn't eat the fish out of here. Raster stripe. Right,
it was still alive in my mouth. Um. But but
but lake Erie got cleaned up. It was a success story.
And then now it's getting repolluted again. So that makes
it even more tragic, and it makes that campaign for
the Lake Area Bill of Rights like even more vital.

(07:48):
And it wasn't just Markey Miller and the Toledo Wins
for Safe Water who were all about protecting Lake Erie.
They had to get a bunch of signatures to get
a to get on a petition to have a bill
introduced to be put up to a vote on how
to protect Lake Eries rights. And they got I think

(08:09):
double the amount needed of signatures to get the petition
on the ballot. Easy, peasy, lemon squeeze. Everybody's on board.
Everybody wants to support uh lake Erie and get it
cleaned up and give it its own Like let's let's
get a lawsuit going on behalf of Lake Erie. Like
how cool is that? Yeah, So they get double the
signatures and they knew that was step one and getting

(08:33):
it actually to a vote would be tough. And I
believe they we're up against you know who. You would
think they would be up against these big industrial companies
that said no, actually, that'd be really bad for us.
If we couldn't pollute the lake, would be bad for
our business. There was a three hundred thousand dollar anti

(08:54):
Lee Boar campaign. Um. Even though it passed by in
they came out with a victory, a very sad and
short lived victory because about twelve hours later, uh an
agricultural company, filed a lawsuit against the city and said
this law is detrimental to our business. We got to

(09:14):
pollute that lake, you guys right. Um. There was a guy,
the judge in the case, Judge Jack Suhari, basically said, like,
this is terrible. This is a terrible law that Toledo passed.
Like it makes sense in its spirit, and like I
respected for that, but it was really poorly written. And

(09:34):
basically what he said was two fold. One, it's way
too vague to be constitutional. He said that you could conceivably,
under the law, be prosecuted for fishing in Lake Erie. Um.
A second one is that Toledo extended its protections across
Lake Erie. Lake Erie is shared by a bunch of

(09:57):
different cities from Toledo to Cleveland to Buffalo, New York
to Erie, Pennsylvania. They're all on Lake Erie. And this
this this the law cross state boundaries and state jurisdictions,
like like Toledo was the You could you could dump
something in Buffalo, New York, and you could be sued
in Toledo, Ohio for it because of this law. So

(10:20):
it was an overreach, but it was a good first step.
And I think it shows that the public is like
on board with this. It's just that they they we
need to figure out how the law needs to be
written to to make it survive court challenges. Right. And
also and I think, uh, I think Miller is right

(10:41):
in in her contention that, like she said, quote, you
have to redefine what it means to win. Like, I
don't think they thought, well, this is it, We're done.
They knew it would be short lived, they knew it
would probably be overturned. But what it did was make
the news. And it's one more step closer to change exactly.
And so there are UM there are more UM Rights

(11:03):
of Nature movement UM movements. I guess that are kind
of popping up around the country and around the world, um,
in places like Hawaii and Florida, like you would expect
in Washington State. UM. And it's a I think it's
a great way to to I think that's a good
direction to be progressing. I think it's a it's I

(11:25):
think it's the future. Agreed. Well, cool, Well, there's not
much more to say about it right now, but who knows,
we'll be talking about it hopefully in a few years.
When is the law of the land across the globe.
And by the way, we found this article originally on
how stuff works and you can go read it there
if you like. And with that short stuff is out.

(11:50):
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