“We have strong environmental laws. The problem is they’re seldom enforced” – Robert Kennedy Jr., The Riverkeepers, 1997.
Robert Kennedy Jr.’s book, subtitled, Two Activists Fight to Reclaim Our Environment as a Basic Human Right, was inspired by his father.
He taught his son the natural world belongs to everyone.
“I always saw pollution as theft,” Robert Jr. said.
But, in New York, the Department of Environmental Protection closed half of America’s shellfish beds, “because it was easier to shut down the resource than to force polluters to restore the value they stole.”
Today, people feel guilty about throwing juice boxes in the trash. But not the guy who left eight garbage bags near Pitt Lake this month, under B.C. Hydro’s Interior to Lower Mainland power line.
They sat at the edge of the gated X-Y dike and Neaves Road. A sign there announces Pitt-Addington Marsh, a wildlife reserve that’s home to herons, osprey, eagles, songbirds, and sand-hill cranes. Fish jump in the water.
The cowardly person probably left his renovation waste under darkness. An animal had opened a bag, exposing insulation. I took pictures, and called the pollution hot line.
Sadly, only four conservation officers cover North Vancouver to Deroche.
“There’s a ton of stuff all over the place,” Robin Sano told me. “It’s a pet peeve of mine. But, unless I get a licence plate, someone who saw the dumping and took pictures, it’s hard to get it through court.”
His ticket is $150; proof pollution isn’t the Ministry of Environment pet peeve.
A bylaw infraction in Pitt Meadows is a laughable $100. But, offenders aren’t ticketed, anyway. They’re sent warning letters, telling polluters they have nothing to worry about.
City operations foreman Teddy Rasmussen said the bags had to be sorted and disposed of by a company licensed to handle toxic materials.
“There was drywall in them. Materials from the ’90s could have asbestos. If we see tape and mud, we call someone. They suit up,” don clothes for hazardous materials.
He wasn’t sure what that costs the city.
Watershed Watch said the DFO hasn’t charged polluters in years, claiming its own enforcement policies are “over-burdensome.”
Stephen Harper entrenched this approach by weakening the Fish Act in 2012. Now Fisheries holds seminars to justify its plan to destroy the Wild Salmon Policy by aligning it with the weakened act.
We wait to see if Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc’s review will toughen it again or prove that the unruly, permissive DFO is deciding salmon policy.
It’s time to stop environment thieves and enablers at all levels.
Rasmussen’s been thinking about game cameras at regular dump sites. Good. Videos are useful in court. Make the fine $10,000 and go after it.
Citizens are part of the solution. Send photos of dumping – times, locations, licence numbers to bylaw and conservation officers.
When U.S. environmental agencies failed to protect the Hudson River, Kennedy’s Riverkeepers went to court.
Groups like Ecojustice, the Suzuki Foundation, are doing that here.
I enjoy a chorus of frogs, or coyotes singing to the moon. Wetlands are theirs, too. If I see someone dumping garbage, I’ll take his or her picture, follow him to trial, and not feel “over-burdened” for a second.
Jack Emberly is a retired teacher, local author and environmentalist.