In ‘Historic Vote,’ Ohio City Residents Grant Lake Erie Legal Rights of a Person

“What Toledo voters and other places working on rights of nature are hoping is to not only change laws but to change culture.”

Tired of receiving notices warning that their drinking water may have been compromised and having little recourse to fight corporate polluters, voters in Toledo, Ohio on Tuesday approved a measure granting Lake Erie some of the same legal rights as a human being.

Sixty-one percent of voters in Tuesday’s special election voted in favor of Lake Erie’s Bill of Rights, which allows residents to take legal action against entities that violate the lake’s rights to “flourish and naturally evolve” without interference.

Toledoans for Safe Water led a years-long campaign to convince voters that their city’s charter must be amended to ensure that the “environmental burden” carried by the lake, which provides drinking water to 12 million Americans and Canadians, must be reduced.

“Beginning today, with this historic vote, the people of Toledo and our allies are ushering in a new era of environmental rights by securing the rights of the Great Lake Erie,” said Markie Miller of Toledoans for Safe Water in a statement.

Under the Bill of Rights, residents will now have legal standing in court to sue corporate polluters on behalf of Lake Erie and to seek damages which would be used to rid the lake of pollution.

The initiative was modeled on “rights to nature” laws which have passed in Lafayette, Colorado; by the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma and the Chippewa Nation in Minnesota; and countries including India and Nepal.

Toledoans for Safe Water began their campaign in 2016 in response to a drinking water crisis in the area two years earlier. Five hundred thousand residents of […]

Full article: In ‘Historic Vote,’ Ohio City Residents Grant Lake Erie Legal Rights of a Person

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