Environmental Science & Engineering - www.esemag.com - November 2003
Comments? send them to the editor.
Could even Dr. Johnson’s wit cope with
Toronto’s ongoing garbage crises?
by Tom Davey,
Editor
A little over three decades ago,
Ontario had but one environmental
lawyer, Henry Landis,
who worked for the Ontario
Water Resources Commission, which
later mutated into the Ontario Ministry
of the Environment. Perhaps, at some
Biblical urging, lawyers went forth and
multiplied.
Ironically, it was pro bono
lawyers who emerged from the
morass to challenge the status
quo of the MOE and wage war on
polluting industries through the
Canadian Environmental Law
Association and other activities.
CELA was greatly assisted by
news reporters who, while often
innocent of scientific realities,
were capable of creating eyecatching
headlines which caused
public alarm, seldom reflected in
epidemiological reality. Erroneous
news coverage, when allied
with political correctness, ineptness
and dogma, has cost
Canadians hundreds of millions
over the years.
Currently, Toronto faces its
most serious garbage crisis. If it
were made into a film it could be
an environmental remake of From
Here To Eternity, a veritable triumph
of ecological evangelists
over professional engineers and
chemists. In the 1990s, the Ontario
NDP, under the then Environment
Minister Ruth Grier, created the
Interim Waste Authority (IWA) which
spent some $80 million seeking a
waste disposal solution without a single
bag of garbage ever being interred.
But now the largest city in Canada
has fumbled its way into a serious
garbage crisis. Currently, Toronto is
sending about one hundred huge
garbage trucks a day on return trips to
Michigan.
A conservative guess might put the
total mileage of these garbage trucks at
50,000 miles per week. Moreover, can
you imagine the dioxins and other
toxic combustibles being discharged
from 100 heavy diesel truck exhausts,
driving to Michigan and back, several
days a week? To me, such consumption
of diesel fuel is, ironically, another
form of incineration - without its benefits
of actually disposing of the
garbage. This trucking is certainly not
environmentally benign. In teenage
argot - we should not keep on trucking.
And how can Michigan, a state
which is a fraction of the size of
Ontario, find room for Toronto's
garbage? And how is it that Ontario,
larger in area than half of Continental
Europe, cannot find sites to deal with
its own garbage? I'll tell you why -
political ineptness and scientific ignorance.
Years earlier, the same malaise
caused Ontario, under a Conservative
government, to create the Ontario
Waste Management Corporation
(OWMC) which spent $120 million
over a ten year period seeking both the
technology and a site to treat hazardous
wastes. Apart from large numbers
of reports and studies - which
must have slaughtered quite a few trees
- no treatment facility was ever built.
It is ironic that two governments,
one Conservative and one
Socialist, while political opposites,
became “equal opportunity
wastrels”. Millions in public funds
were lavished on garbage and
toxic wastes solutions without a
molecule of waste actually either
being treated or disposed of. In
this case, the word “disposal”, for
both endeavours, is an oxymoron.
These levels of wasted funding
could have done much to restore
and upgrade our water and wastewater
infrastructure, improve analytical
monitoring and remediate
toxic sites. Instead, hundreds of
millions were squandered on projects
doomed to failure. There are
many other examples but more
trees would have to be slaughtered
simply to list them.
The environmental crises
helped in the new breed of environmental
lawyers which has progressed
almost exponentially. At
first, the realities of environmental
sciences exceeded the technical grasp
of many otherwise eloquent lawyers.
But today’s environmental lawyers
have added considerable technical and
scientific knowledge to their legal
weaponry and have emerged as significant
and formidable players in a field
long dominated, albeit anonymously,
by engineers and chemists.
But the law is possibly the oldest
learned profession - note my choice of
words. Even when Henry VIII conducted
his murderous serial polygamy,
he tried to clothe his butchery with
legal apparel. Stalin, too, paid lip service
to a judicial system with his infamous
show trials.
Dr. Samuel Johnson, renowned for
his Epicurean appetite as well as his
wit and wisdom, compiled his famous
dictionary on Gough Square which
still stands in close proximity to the
heart of the British legal world. His
house is situated close by London’s
Inns of Court, the Old Bailey, and the
Royal Courts of Justice.
Johnson, in fact and probably in
spirit, clearly was close to the legal
system. He once famously remarked:
“I do not like to speak ill of any man;
but I strongly suggest yonder gentleman
to be an attorney.” When I used
this quote some years ago, it evoked
more response than any other single
issue.
But, as in any legal case, one should
not judge before reviewing all the evidence.
Dr. Johnson also made the following
observation to his biographer,
Boswell, to whom he said: “It rarely
happens that a man is fit to plead his
own cause. Lawyers are a class of the
community, who, by study and experience,
have acquired the art and power
of arranging evidence, and of applying
to the points at issue what the law has
settled. A lawyer is to do for his client
all that the client might fairly do for
himself”.
Both the medical and engineering
professions have borne the brunt of
lawyers’ wit when testifying and legal
eloquence is one of the great weapons
of the legal profession. Sometimes
they meet their match. One dogged
cross-examiner in a Massachusetts
case once asked of a pathologist
whether he could be sure the patient
was dead when he began the autopsy.
The pathologist asserted, “the patient
was indeed dead.”
But the lawyer persisted: “How can
you be sure, Doctor?”
“Because his brain is sitting in a jar
on my desk”, was the defining reply.
However, rather unwisely, the
lawyer would not give up: “But could
the patient still have been alive, nevertheless?”
“It’s possible”, retorted the pathologist,
“that he could still be alive and
practicing law somewhere”.
Game set and mismatch.
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