Meredith Brown-Ottawa Riverkeeper

As most of you know by now, the City of Ottawa was fined a total of $562,500 on October 10th for two infractions under the Ontario Water Resources Act: 1) illegally spilling the equivalent of 350 Olympic-pools of raw sewage into the Ottawa River in 2006, and 2) failing to report the spill to the Ministry of Environment.

As you would expect, Ottawa Riverkeeper followed events leading up to and including this sentence with keen interest. As Riverkeeper, I am personally satisfied with the end result as it marks very significant progress on several fronts in protecting and ensuring the future health of the River.

First of all, the guilty finding verifies that the system actually works. In a time when enforcement activities across Canada are generally suffering from lack of resources or political will, Ontario’s Ministry of Environment has been successful in applying legislation to protect our waterways. I applaud the Ministry for pursuing this case with such diligence. I also applaud you, the public, for speaking out strongly, demonstrating once again that public involvement can play a valuable role in motivating a regulator to aggressively apply enforcement measures at its disposal.

Secondly, I feel that the fine imposed upon the City was significant enough to act as a deterrent, without being overly punitive. It sends a clear message that municipalities cannot regard their waterways as dumping stations for unlimited amounts of raw sewage. To those who argue that the fine ultimately comes from Ottawa’s taxpayers I can only ask, What is the alternative? There is none. Just as any city is held responsible for unsafe roads and bridges, it must also be held accountable for polluting its waterways. Such accountability ultimately leads to better municipalities.

Lastly, this case has given birth to a number of very positive developments: After every rain, city staff now check sewer valves to ensure that they have not jammed open. And staff will take greater responsibility to report all infractions to the Ministry. On a broader scale, the City has accepted accountability for polluting the Ottawa River, has made a commitment to repair and improve its sewage infrastructure, and has established a fund to do so. Both the Province and the federal government have made significant contributions to this fund. Today, thanks to successful legal action, polluting the River is a far more important political issue than it was before October 10.

In conclusion, I am encouraged by all these developments and congratulate those who played positive roles.

Meredith Brown
Ottawa Riverkeeper

When I Was Your Age, Pluto Was a Planet

The Facebook group "When I Was Your Age, Pluto Was a Planet" is really popular with more the 1,300,000 members and still growing since it's conception a year ago when Pluto was officially determined to not fill all the criteria of 'planet'.

I think this is such a popular group is because it really drives home a point about knowledge; especially scientific knowledge. In today's western society we justify everything with science. Stupid articles in "The Sun" quote 'scientific studies show..." and we beleive them because of science. And the whole science culture. Scientist beleive they hold the truest form of knowledge. Scientific studies are made to have as little confounding variables as possible. As if science were somehow devoid of values, politics and money. This rift in the secular age between what the public knows and what a specialist knows makes for a sort of technocratic empire on which the system depends.

But although we think the science that backs our policy is supposed to be objective, really how variables are defined and what we decide to study comes from arbitrary norms or personal preferences. Pluto was a planet because we said so.

Now it's not. We could have changed the definition of planet. But no, that would make too many planets. We could give some honorary recognition to the planet, but in a decade who will care. So now it's not a planet. This is history in the making. Now if your junk becomes antiques and is found by one of your great great grandson or granddaughter, it will be so foreign to them that your books say there are nine planets. How silly are we to believe in a 9th(!) planet? We called it Pluuuu-toh.

I think this really shakes up ppl's minds because we believe everything we learn in school. I dont recall learning what the definition of 'planet' was in school, and i never thought to look it up. Even if i did, it wouldn't give me the three required criteria of 'planet'. In fact my dictionary offers moon (a satellite) and celestial body (not very scientific) as definitions...

I have this vague recollection of CBC's "Quirks&Quarks" of talking about how it really isn't a planet when growing up. I suppose the scientific community has been thinking about this for a while and felt it really did mess up their discourse when having to refers to Pluto as planet. Thank GOD, it's now classified as dwarf planet, or else things would just be too confusing.

Learn more about Pluto.

Today's Lesson: Science doesn't mean true, just widely accepted.