WILL THEY RAISE THE VOTING AGE TO THE PLEISTOCENE?

    THE NEW YORK TIMES

Legal Rights for Lake Erie? Voters in Ohio City Will Decide

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By Timothy Williams              Feb. 17, 2019 

The failing health of Lake Erie, the world’s 11th largest lake, is at the heart of one of the most unusual questions to appear on an American ballot: Should a body of water be given rights normally associated with those granted to a person? 

Voters in Toledo, Ohio, will be asked this month to decide whether Lake Erie has the legal right “to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.”... If the lake gets legal rights, the theory goes, people can sue polluters on its behalf. 

The proposed Lake Erie Bill of Rights ... seek to show that ... ecosystems like the lake “possess independent rights to survive and be healthy.”... 

In 2014, the city went without drinking water for three days when the lake became so fouled by phosphorus runoff from upstream farms that household water was fit only for flushing toilets ... earlier this year, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota announced that it had granted wild rice its own legal rights, including “the right to pure water.” 

In Toledo, much of Lake Erie is frozen over this winter. But nearly every summer for the last several years, water runoff from large farms flowed into the lake and produced a slick green coating of toxic algae so expansive that it could be seen from space... 

Nick Komives, a City Council member,... said... “The initiative is a powerful tactic. And for me, coming from an activist background, it is important to send messages. But this is probably unconstitutional.”