photo credit: tripadvisor.com
SANDUSKY — Voters in Toledo
approved a “Lake Erie Bill of Rights” as an amendment to the city charter, a
measure aimed at giving the lake and its watershed legal rights that can be
defended in court.
A local farm immediately filed a
lawsuit challenging the measure as unlawful. The Ohio Farm Bureau vowed to
support the lawsuit.
The measure was approved Tuesday
after winning approval by 61 percent of the voters.
Toledoans for Safe Water said they
were pleased to get the measure approved despite the opposition of special
interest groups, such as industry and the farm lobby.
“It was definitely a long, hard
struggle to get to this day, but all the hard work and countless volunteer
hours by everyone in our local community group has paid off,” said Crystal
Jankowski, an organizer with the group. “We started this more than two years
ago and had to overcome election board decisions and protests in court just to
get on the ballot.”
Backers described the law as the
first of its kind in the U.S. and said it guarantees the right of Lake Erie to
exist, flourish and naturally evolve.
“It is in accord with the larger
Rights of Nature movement and philosophy which, over the past decade, has
resulted in Ecuador’s 2008 constitutional acknowledgment of the rights of
Mother Nature; New Zealand’s 2014 granting legal personhood to the Te Urewera
forest; and India’s courts ruling in 2017 that the Ganges and Yamuna rivers
have rights to exist, thrive, and evolve,” a news release states, which was
issued by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit which helped
draft the amendment.
The “Rights to Nature movement” is
apparently seen by at least some farmers as an attack on private property
rights.
. . .
And how is Lake Erie to represent itself in court? Will we be electing a Lake Erie Regent to assert jurisdiction and define rights? Read the full report here.
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