Campbell Soup is toxifying the Great Lakes. This is important to all of us. The poisons that are dumped into water affect the health and welfare of all living beings on earth.
Even though I have a personal interest in Toledo, Ohio and Lake Erie because that’s where I grew up, the damaging effects of poisoning our water is universal; and affects us here in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado.
The DOJ (Department of Justice) on behalf of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency); and two nonprofit environmental groups filed separate lawsuits against a wholly owned subsidiary of Campbell Soup Inc. They claim that the soup company is dumping wastewater containing E. coli (intestinal bacterium from humans and animals); phosphorus (key chemical causing toxic algae blooms); and other contaminants into the Maumee River.
As a practicing attorney with a science undergrad degree from The University of Toledo, I am interested in environmental issues. My letter to editor “Wetlands” was published by The Pagosa Springs SUN last June.
Water issues are quite important. Use of water for drinking; and other Colorado River uses are at the brink of a water supply crisis. In addition, the lakes in and around Pagosa are sporting recurrent algae blooms that appear to be increasing in rate of occurrence.
I listened to some of my colleagues who claim that the incidence of cancer has increased dramatically since 1973. I have not, as yet, verified this assertion.
Other than growing up in Toledo, and getting my Bachelor of Science, cum laude from the University, one of my first adventures took place in the exact place where Campbell’s is accused of dumping its waste.
One of my first scuba diving adventures was jumping from a helicopter into the Maumee River to extricate racing boat debris after a crash. The driver of the craft had already been rescued by a more seasoned member of our team. A few things were extraordinary about this event. I was the only woman. The Maumee River running through Toledo, Ohio out to Lake Erie had been off-limits due to serious contamination of industrial waste; and had just recently been cleared enough to allow human activity. The year was 1973. This was one of the first massive clean up solutions that advertised its panacea to better health. Racing hydroplane power boats that usually competed on lakes and rivers in Florida was an extraordinary manner of proclaiming political power in Ohio.
The Great Lakes have been being polluted for more than a century due to industrial waste. One would think that we could know better now, and that our populace and the corporations that we create would commence some form of explication, which could minimize and even eliminate degrading the water that sustains the sustenance and health of all humans.
But, does greed prevail over solution?
