Letters to the Editor

Brandon Sun - PRINT EDITION

Lake sacrificed for politics

By: Uncredited

Thursday, Sep. 13, 2012 | Comments: 1

“It’s time to stop bickering and work together to find a viable solution to our mutual water quality issues before we destroy one of our most precious resources.” Re: (Our View, 17 Aug., The Brandon Sun)

Thank you, Brandon Sun, for publishing your support and acknowledgement in recognizing that Lake Winnipeg and many of our other lakes in Manitoba are in desperate need of help.

On Feb. 18, 2003, Steve Ashton, as conservation minister, announced a commitment to reduce the contribution of nitrogen and phosphorus to Lake Winnipeg and to restore nutrient conditions to those that existed prior to the 1970s.

A decade later, has there been any improvement? I will say no. In fact, I believe conditions have worsened and steadily escalated.

There has to be action with a determined will of the people and governments to save our waters. The continual rhetorical propaganda that is published has the effects of a placebo. Lake Winnipeg has been literally studied to death.

It will not be possible for Lake Winnipeg or any of our waters to survive as long as politics keeps playing its role of constipating the efforts of their recovery. The threat is real. When the lake collapses and dies, the people of Manitoba, of Winnipeg, all the fishers of the lake, the several thousand cottagers and all those who enjoyed the lake will ask “Why didn’t our governments do something?”

The governments were doing something — they were politicking.

For this, the lake was sacrificed, and the stain of this treachery will serve as its monument. It could not endure the constant abuse that emanates from the enemy among us. What will we tell our children and grandchildren about how we failed to stop the pollution that eventually destroyed the 10th-largest fresh water lake in the world?

John Fefchak

Virden

Republished from the Brandon Sun print edition September 13, 2012

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Posted by:Bill the Needle

September 13, 2012 at 9:09 PM

First there needs to be facts-based consensus on the main cause of the pollution. That debate still rages.

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Thank you, Brandon Sun, for publishing your support and acknowledgement in recognizing that Lake Winnipeg and many of our other lakes in Manitoba are in desperate need of help.

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Thank you, Brandon Sun, for publishing your support and acknowledgement in recognizing that Lake Winnipeg and many of our other lakes in Manitoba are in desperate need of help.

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