Mobile drinking
water treatment facilities
unquestionably saved
thousands of
lives in WWI.
But few know of the
remarkable
Canadian chemist
Lt. Colonel Naismith,
a real eco-warrior.
History, it is said, is written by
the victorious. While it was
the environmental scientists
and chemists that won most
of the major victories in the fight
against water-borne diseases, the news
media repeatedly, and erroneously, still
writes that 1970 was the ‘birth of the
environmental movement’.
Media chronology and public
awareness are out of whack by a century
and a half. With some notable
exceptions, I think environmental
reporting has concentrated on the
colourful protesters and imaginative
stunts, while the real environmentalists
were virtually ignored.
As recently as May 2004, a Toronto
newspaper article heaped lavish praise
on a ‘pioneer environmentalist and
eco-warrior’, noting that the environmental
movement had begun in 1970.
The writer clearly was unaware of at
least 150 years of activity in environmental
engineering and analytical
chemistry when palpable progress was
made in reducing lethal water-borne
epidemics.
Yet another milestone in public
health was the creation of the
American Water Works Association
(AWWA) in 1881, to be joined later by
what is now the Water Environment
Federation (WEF). In my opinion,
these world-renowned bodies did more
to advance the state-of-the-art in public
health than the medical profession.
Canada has had a strong presence
reflected in several AWWA and WEF
associations and sections throughout
the country. Both AWWA and WEF
have invested hundreds of millions in
research to reduce water-borne diseases.
The news media, which cover
‘environmental stories’, are usually
conspicuous by their absence at the
annual meetings of these associations.
A Toronto chemist, Lt. Colonel
Naismith, played a major role during
World War I, unquestionably saving
tens of thousands of lives. He devised
practical methods to purify drinking
water on the battlefield, when unsafe
drinking water killed five times more
people than bullets or artillery.
Lost to history, too, is the story of
people such as Pat Bourgeois, who
organized the Association Québécoise
des Techniques de l’Eau (AQTE), a
professional activist group which
began in the mid 1960s and was highly
critical of Québec government neglect
of environmental infrastructure.
AQTE developed into a powerful combination
of engineers and scientists,
becoming a major force within
Québec. Now called RESEAU environnement,
it is one of the most powerful
professional environmental
groups in Canada.
Pat Bourgeois later became president
of the Federation of Associations
on the Canadian Environment (FACE),
eventually handing over the chain of
office to Stanley Mason in British
Columbia. FACE later mutated into the
present-day Canadian Water and
Wastewater Association. These activities
began well before Greenpeace,
Pollution Probe and other activist
groups emerged to dominate environmental
media coverage and change
political agendas.
A professor of environmental engineering
at the University of Toronto,
Dr. Philip Jones, fought a vigorous
campaign in 1968 to reduce the
amount of phosphates in laundry
detergents. He appeared on television
and was the subject of countless editorials
across Canada which, at that time,
did not even have a federal or provincial
Environment Minister. Joe
Greene, then Minister of Mines,
Energy and Resources, was impressed
and introduced an amendment to the
Canada Water Act, resulting in the
reduction of phosphates in laundry
detergents.
These notable men and the organizations
they inspired, were surely the
true pioneer environmentalists - yet
they languish in obscurity.
Toronto, mainly due to pressure to
abandon incineration as an option, is
currently shipping its garbage to
Detroit. Amazingly, the city has now
begun shipping biosolids, a euphemism
for treated sewage sludge. This
type of “export” is redolent of a Third
World country, not one of the richest
countries in the world. For a city which
rejected garbage incineration because
of fears of air pollution, the thought of
150 huge diesel garbage trucks, belching
out pollution as they make an 800
kilometre round trip, mostly through
Ontario, can only be described as a
comedy of the absurd. This appallingly
expensive, highly polluting procedure
is the very antithesis of the hightech
exports Canadians should be shipping
across the border. But where are
the eco-warriors now?
A recent report pointed out that the
average Canadian water and sewage
pipe network has used up to 50% of its
predicted life. Our water pipes are
being replaced at a rate of six tenths of
one percent, meaning that on average,
each pipe would be replaced every 150
years. Walkerton is a sombre warning
of the potential price, human and fiscal,
of infrastructure neglect. The
McGuinty Liberal government in
Ontario recently switched $60 million
from its health budget to infrastructure.
Noble as this seems, it is still $4
million short of the $64 million spent
investigating the Walkerton drinking
water tragedy. Had a mere fraction of
these monies been spent on infrastructure
rehabilitiation and disinfection
equipment, the disaster could have
been avoided by an investment of a few
thousands, not millions.
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