Voters in Toledo, Ohio, will be asked this month to decide whether Lake Erie, which supports the economies of four states, one Canadian province and the cities of Toledo, Cleveland and Buffalo, New York, has the legal right “to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.”
The peculiar ballot question comes amid a string of environmental calamities at the lake — poisonous algal blooms in summer, runoff containing fertilizer and animal manure, and a constant threat from invasive fish. But this special election is not merely symbolic. It is legal strategy: If the lake gets legal rights, the theory goes, people can sue polluters on its behalf.
Under current law, lakes and deserts do not have legal standing, so people cannot sue on their behalf.
In Toledo, residents and elected officials say they believe the initiative has a good chance of being approved, but there is a catch: The measure’s own backers acknowledge that it is likely to be challenged in court as having little or no legal footing, and that it could ultimately be invalidated as reaching beyond the scope of city law.
The initiative’s main opponents are the owners of area farms, where much of the agricultural runoff that feeds the lake’s toxic algae originates. Farmers say that if the measure passes thousands of small farms could be sued for damages for polluting the lake and driven out of business.
Thomas Linzey, executive director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit group based in Pennsylvania that helped write the measure, said existing environmental laws were inadequate.
The intent of the initiative, Linzey said, is twofold — to send a warning that the community is fed up with a lack of state and federal action to protect Lake Erie, and to force the courts to recognize that ecosystems like the lake “possess independent rights to survive and be healthy.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.