Protecting the Lake: Water and Resistance in a Rustbelt City
Topics: Environmental Justice
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Keywords: Civil society; resistance; water; rustbelt
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 32
Authors:
Sujata Shetty, University of Toledo
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Abstract
In the summer of 2014, residents of Toledo, Ohio, faced a three-day water shut-off, a result of cyanobacteria the western end of Lake Erie, the intake point for the city’s water supply. It was the low point in a long history of the lake’s pollution, originally from industry but as industry has left the region, increasingly from agriculture and industrial farming. In 2019, voters in Toledo passed an amendment for a “Lake Erie Bill of Rights” to be included in the city charter. The amendment was important because it was one of the first of its kind in the U.S. to adopt the principle of “rights of nature,” to give legal standing to environmental entities like lakes or rivers, paving the way for lawsuits on behalf of Lake Erie and against polluters. This work will employ the frameworks of “rights of nature” and “environmental personhood” as a theoretical starting point. Using content analysis of contemporaneous media reports, we will highlight the work of environmental activists who, finding that traditional approaches were not yielding results, used this novel approach and were able to organize, place the amendment on the ballot and have the ballot measure pass. This case study will add to our understanding of forms of civil society resistance to traditional forms of governance, and to the effects of region-wide environmental exploitation and industrial practices in the U.S. rustbelt.
Protecting the Lake: Water and Resistance in a Rustbelt City
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Virtual Paper Abstract
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