http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wamc/local-wamc-981508.mp3
Albany, NY – In today's Academic Minute, Dr. Dayna Scott of York University examines the legal rights of factories and the civil rights of those living downwind from pollution hot spots.
Dayna Scott is an associate professor at York University's Osgoode Hall Law School where she teaches courses in administrative law, environmental law, and international environmental governance. Her current research project, Environmental Justice for the Aamjiwnaang, is focused on the issue of chronic pollution on an Ontario reserve. In 2008-09, Professor Scott served as Director of the National Network on Environments and Women's Health.
Dr. Dayna Scott - Pollution and Civil Rights
Does the chronic release of pollutants into the air violate our Constitutional rights? This very argument is currently before the courts in Canada. Two members of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation argue that the steady flow of toxic air pollutants onto their reserve near Sarnia, Ontario threatens their health, and violates their equality rights.
The mantra of the environmental justice movement that "some of us live more downstream than others", is a stark truth in Sarnia's Chemical Valley, located at the southern tip of Lake Huron just across the river from Michigan. This area houses one of Canada's largest concentrations of industry, with several petroleum refineries and chemical plants, as well as coal-fired utilities on both sides of the border.
How did it get to this? Ontario has known for a long time that its air pollution law fails miserably in so-called "pollution hotspots" - places where several large, high emitting facilities are clustered together. The law allows companies to get a permit based on their own individual emissions, without taking into account the background levels of pollution already present.
In pollution hotspots, the rules can't protect the health of residents downwind, because they can't account for the cumulative impact of pollutants from multiple sources. When the community downwind is an aboriginal Band confined to a reserve, equality rights are clearly in play.
This is why two members of the local First Nation recently filed their court challenge. If they win, it will be the first time in Canada that chronic, routine, and permitted pollution will be found to be unconstitutional.