{"id":1750,"date":"2017-07-10T04:47:03","date_gmt":"2017-07-10T11:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=1750"},"modified":"2017-07-10T04:47:03","modified_gmt":"2017-07-10T11:47:03","slug":"anger-and-indifference-on-lake-winnipeg-the-walrus-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=1750","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Anger and Indifference on Lake Winnipeg&#8221;, The Walrus Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Mark Mann, Illustration by Irma Kniivla, Feature, The Walrus Foundation, Toronto, Jun. 26, 2017<\/p>\n<p>Is the viscous green sludge that coats the water an ecological disaster\u2014or just a nuisance for beachgoers?<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"smallcaps\">Lake winnipeg<\/span> is large and changes colour. As summer progresses, parts of it slowly shift from milky mahogany to bluish green, and by August, it can be emerald in places, as vivid as a golf course. From space, it looks as though someone poured a \u00a0giant kale smoothie onto the Manitoba landscape.<\/p>\n<p>What the satellites are picking up are billions of tiny aquatic organisms that, individually, are usually visible only under a microscope. They can be long and thin, like a sliver of grass, or short and round, like a squishy stress ball. They might fan out like miniature ferns, or form star patterns as intricate as a snowflake. Some have little tails to move through water; others simply float. All are considered species of algae, and they feed on nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. When too many nutrients pour into a lake, these life forms grow in wild unhinged\u00a0abundance.<\/p>\n<p>Among the many kinds of algae that thrive in Lake Winnipeg are cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. One of the most successful micro-organisms on the \u00adplanet, they once performed a billion-year photosynthesis project that helped generate the oxygen in our atmosphere. When those \u00adancient algae died, they formed the oil deposits we use to power cars and jets. \u00adToday, \u00adtoxins in blue-green algae can kill a dog that\u2019s splashing around in an afflicted lake\u2014sometimes in under an hour.<\/p>\n<p>In August 2015, biologist Eva Pip travelled to Hillside Beach in the south basin of Lake Winnipeg\u2014about an hour-and-a-half drive from downtown Winnipeg\u2014to look for neurotoxins in the algae. She\u2019d been going out to various beaches every three days since spring, collecting samples and testing them for beta-methylamino-L-alanine, or <span class=\"smallcaps\">bmaa<\/span>\u2014an amino acid that cyanobacteria can produce and that has been linked to degenerative brain diseases including Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (<span class=\"smallcaps\">als<\/span>) and Parkinson\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>The beach was full of people. Hillside is a sandy, shallow inlet. There are no boardwalks, no shacks selling ice cream\u2014only families with small children, and locals carrying coolers. Grandparents lounge in beach chairs, and parents loll on colourful towels, watching their kids splash one another with turbid water.<\/p>\n<p>Pip cut an eccentric figure as she sloshed out of the lake, wearing hip waders and carrying water samples\u2014and even more so when she started addressing the young children, cautioning them not to play with the thick, viscous mats of dead algae that had washed up on shore.<\/p>\n<p>She wears her hair in a loose bun, so that the tops of her ears peek out through the brown and slightly grey wisps that spray down to her shoulders, and her eyes are bright and blue. But her mild appearance is misleading. She has become Lake Winnipeg\u2019s own weeping Jeremiah\u2014or, in a modern version of that archetype, its saddest and angriest scientist.<\/p>\n<p>Lake Winnipeg is the tenth-largest freshwater lake in the world. For decades, it has suffered from severe eutrophication, a process that results when aquatic ecosystems are overwhelmed with nutrients, usually from local runoff. But disagreements persist over how serious the problem is: it might spell doom for the lake\u2019s food web and pose dangerous health risks to those who use it, as Pip argues, or it could just be a cosmetic blight that threatens tourists\u2019 and cottagers\u2019 enjoyment of the water. It\u2019s either an ecological disaster or a late-summer nuisance\u2014or something in between. Many who live by the lake are now accustomed to the green sludge and occasional stench, and they seem just as likely to dismiss the problem as join a campaign to fix it.<\/p>\n<p>Pip remembers the first time she collected samples on Lake Winnipeg, back in 1961, when the water was so clear she could see the kaleidoscope of colours formed by pebbles on the lakebed. Since then, the lake has suffered a barrage of \u00adattacks: \u00adfertilizer that\u2019s washed directly \u00adinto the waterways from nearby fields; overflow from municipal sewage systems; the contents of faulty septic tanks. All of it ends up in Lake Winnipeg.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"advertisement nocontent robots-nocontent\"><\/aside>\n<p>Toxic algal blooms have been wreaking havoc all over North America. Three years ago, an eruption of algae in Lake Erie left more than 500,000 water customers in Toledo, Ohio, without drinking water. Last summer, blue-green slime coated \u00adrivers and beaches in Florida, prompting a state of emergency in four counties. In July 2016, 130 people reported vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, and rashes \u00adafter coming in contact with algae-infested Utah Lake.<\/p>\n<p>On that August day two years ago, Pip claims to have found <span class=\"smallcaps\">bmaa<\/span>levels of 306 micrograms per litre\u2014\u201ca very high concentration,\u201d she said. There are hardly any standards regulating <span class=\"smallcaps\">bmaa<\/span> in Canada, because it isn\u2019t studied much here. But <span class=\"smallcaps\">bmaa<\/span> testing isn\u2019t a settled matter in other countries, either. Gregory \u00adBoyer, a\u00a0biochemist at the State University of New York, has, for example, called into question the very accuracy of such \u00admeasurements. He\u00a0points out that some methods make it easy to confuse <span class=\"smallcaps\">bmaa<\/span> with other amino acids of the same molecular weight. He also believes <span class=\"smallcaps\">bmaa<\/span> isn\u2019t present in Lake Winnipeg, because his work didn\u2019t show it. For her part, Pip argues that no one wants to admit how toxic Lake Winnipeg algae might be because the \u00adeconomic fallout of a crippled fishery and tourism industries would be severe. A \u00adpoisoned lake is one thing, a poisonous lake quite another.<\/p>\n<p>Pip\u2019s biggest quarrel is with government scientists. \u201cI\u2019ve been extremely disappointed by how apathetic the community has been,\u201d she told me. Her frustration was one of the reasons that, in\u00a02016, she left her post at the University of Winnipeg, where she\u2019d studied more than 650\u00a0lakes and contributed to more than 123 published studies. \u201cYou\u2019re supposed to behave the way everybody else does, and then you\u2019re one of them,\u201d she says. \u201cBut if you\u2019re outspoken, then you\u2019re an alarmist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her outspokenness has made Pip perhaps the most controversial scientist in \u00adManitoba. Mention her name among researchers who study algae or work to \u00adimprove the water quality of Lake Winnipeg, and you\u2019ll likely trigger strong responses ranging from irritation to concern. Some regard her crusading\u2014especially her penchant for making dire pronouncements that win the attention of news \u00adoutlets\u2014as deeply off-putting.<\/p>\n<p>Karen Scott is the educational program coordinator for the Lake Winnipeg Research Consortium, which helps researchers collect data on the lake from sixty-five monitoring locations. Over the last few years, she has taken on the role of myth buster. She meets with community groups to explain why messages such as \u201cThe lake is dying\u201d and \u201cThe lake is toxic\u201d aren\u2019t \u00adaccurate, no matter how often the media reinforces them.<\/p>\n<p>First, the lake is technically <em>too<\/em> alive: there are too many nutrients feeding too much algae. Second, such statements \u00adcreate the false impression that the toxins are ubiquitous, when in fact they\u2019re present only in some algae and then \u00admostly in late summer if the algae are blooming. Calling the whole lake toxic, says Scott, is like saying a forest is poisonous because poisonous mushrooms grow in it.<\/p>\n<p>Like Pip, Scott works to make people think more carefully about their relationship with water. But she operates at the other end of the sensationalism \u00adspectrum. When Scott talks to the \u00adpublic, she tries to convey a simple \u00admessage: \u201cWater moves.\u201d We may see it for only the fraction of the second it takes to \u00adtravel from the faucet to the drain, but it travelled far to soak our toothbrushes, and has farther yet to go. Lake Winnipeg, in other words, isn\u2019t just the large body of algae-packed water in Manitoba: it\u2019s part of an enormous watershed that spans about a million square kilometres between the Canadian Shield and the Rocky Mountains. Water moves, past farms and factories, through pipes and ditches, in and out of towns and cities. Sooner or later, it all ends up in the same place, along with everything it picked up along the way.<\/p>\n<p>How much people value water often depends on whether it\u2019s moving away from or toward them. For the farmers and city dwellers upstream, what\u2019s out of sight \u00adpasses easily out of mind. But for the \u00adIndigenous people and cottage communities near the lake, what the others ignore is bright green and hard to miss.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">M<\/span><span class=\"smallcaps\">ore than 400<\/span> kilometres long from bottom to top, Lake Winnipeg consists of two distinct sections: a\u00a0smaller south basin, home to a handful of Indigenous communities and most of its public beaches and cottages, and a\u00a0\u00adlarger north basin that includes part of the pickerel and whitefish fishery.<\/p>\n<p>Despite its enormous size, Lake Winnipeg is a small remnant of a much bigger lake that once covered the entire province of Manitoba and large sections of Ontario, as well as parts of Saskatchewan, Minnesota, and North Dakota. Lake Agassiz was formed at the end of the last ice age by meltwater from a glacier that was four kilometres thick and so heavy it depressed the Earth\u2019s crust by 100 metres. As the \u00adglacier melted, the land started to spring back, causing some of the water in the \u00adregion to travel north, toward Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean.<\/p>\n<p>When Lake Agassiz drained out to sea, it left behind a flattened landscape full of lakes and bogs. Today, after a summer rainstorm, the fields look as if they\u2019re trying to return to their former sogginess. Water collects in every indentation, filling the ditches and forming dirty brown ponds amid otherwise lush crops.<\/p>\n<p>Farmers have been waging war on Manitoba\u2019s waterlogged landscape for more than a century. Their aim is simple: get rid of the water. Over the last thirty years, we\u2019ve lost more than 100,000 acres of wetland\u2014the equivalent of four and half football fields a day\u2014many of which were drained to create additional arable farmland. The government has carved out a vast network of drainage ditches across the \u00adManitoba prairie to move rainfall and snowmelt off the fields\u2014and drain the wetlands\u2014as quickly as possible. At one time, the wetlands \u00adabsorbed spring snowmelt like a sponge and released it slowly over the summer; now, though, that water races north to Lake Winnipeg all at once.<\/p>\n<p>To make matters worse, there\u2019s also more water to contend with. Although precipitation comes in multi-decade cycles of dry and wet, the latest wet period, which started in the mid \u201990s, is much wetter because of climate change. Hotter temperatures cause more evaporation and greater rainfall. Water is steaming off the Gulf of Mexico, and low pressure systems are bringing it north to Manitoba. Consequently, the Red River Basin, a fertile region south of Lake Winnipeg that \u00adincludes parts of North Dakota and Minnesota, has doubled its flow of water to the lake in the last twenty years.<\/p>\n<p>The Manitoba landscape is naturally prone to flooding, but the combination of the ditches, wetland loss, and increased precipitation has exacerbated the problem dramatically. The province has had roughly fourteen floods since 1996, at least four of which washed out roads, displaced-people from their homes, and prompted states of emergency.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s no coincidence that the current wet period corresponds with the rise of persistent algal blooms. The water carries fertilizer from fields, and leaches phosphorus from dead plants left on the ground over the winter (farmers call them \u201cplant litter\u201d). Even though the Red River represents only 15 percent of the water that enters the lake, it\u2019s responsible for 70 percent of the \u00adnutrients. And more nutrients mean more algae.<\/p>\n<p>Bob Hecky, a retired professor of lake ecology who has studied eutrophication describes nutrient loading in terms of a\u00a0\u201cclassic arc.\u201d In the beginning, the lake responds by producing more algae. The algae feed zooplankton, which feed small fish, which feed larger fish. At the peak of the arc, the algae create growth in fish populations in the lake. What\u2019s bad for the lake can be wonderful for the fishery. The algal blooms have boosted the numbers of pickerel\u2014the highest-priced fish in Lake Winnipeg, also called walleye. The \u00adonly problems are that algae make the nets heavy and render them visible underwater.<\/p>\n<p>But the rise in fish populations is only the middle stage of eutrophication. Severe nutrient loading produces more algae than the food web can handle. And as the algae die, they feed bacteria that consume the oxygen in the water, starting at the bottom of the lake. This process leads to the dead zones, or pockets of low oxygen, that may be appearing in Lake Winnipeg.<\/p>\n<p>Because the dead zones appear \u00adcloser to the bottom of the lake\u2014wind and waves don\u2019t mix the oxygen below a certain depth\u2014species that prefer the colder, deeper waters lose their habitat. Those in the warmer upper waters thrive. This effect is especially pronounced in East \u00adAfrica\u2019s Lake Victoria, which has one of the worst eutrophication problems on the planet, as well as a large freshwater fishery. Today, most of the fish live in the upper twenty-five or thirty metres of Lake Victoria, while the bottom thirty metres are almost completely devoid of life. If Lake Victoria\u2019s fish population were to collapse, so too would an important source of employment.<\/p>\n<p>Since Lake Winnipeg isn\u2019t deep enough to sustain a consistent dead zone, Karen Scott argues, the notion of a \u201cdead lake\u201d doesn\u2019t apply. If anything, the reverse is true: if algae were a cash crop, the lake would be the most productive farm in Manitoba.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">T<\/span><span class=\"smallcaps\">he sky<\/span> was grey and spitting the day Mike Paterson and I crawled into a small boat and motored out to see Lake 227, an important spot for global \u00adeutrophication studies. Paterson has been working at the International Institute for Sustainable Development\u2013Experimental Lakes Area (<span class=\"smallcaps\">iisd-ela<\/span>) since the early \u201990s, and he\u2019s spent much of that time researching the effects of nutrient loading.<\/p>\n<p>In 1968, the Ontario government set aside forty-six pristine freshwater lakes (and their watersheds) in northwestern \u00adOntario and handed them over to research scientists, who promptly set about dumping in nutrients. The aim of the project was to perform whole-lake ecosystem studies. In a famous example, they divided one of the lakes in two, added phosphorus to one half, and found that algae bloomed only there. At\u00a0the time, eutrophication in the Great Lakes was creating a large dead zone and threatening the fish populations. Many scientists attributed the growth of algae to phosphates, which had been traced, in part, to detergents flushed into the lake from nearby cities. The detergent companies pushed back by casting doubt on the science, suggesting that other nutrients\u2014such as nitrogen or carbon\u2014could be the culprit. But thanks to the <span class=\"smallcaps\">iisd-ela<\/span>, eutrophication researchers had all the proof they needed.<\/p>\n<p>The <span class=\"smallcaps\">iisd-ela<\/span> includes about fifteen plain buildings at the end of a thirty-kilometre-long gravel road that roller-coasters through a pine forest. The lakes set aside by the organization have bedrock bottoms that prevent the water from leaching into the earth, making them ideal for controlled studies. Lake 227 could have been built in a laboratory: a circle about 250 metres in diameter, it\u2019s easy to study and easy to manage.<\/p>\n<p>The rain misted Paterson\u2019s glasses as we skimmed across Lake 468\u2014more \u00adcommonly called Roddy Lake\u2014and then tramped in our rubber boots along a short path to Lake 305, where we climbed \u00adinto another motorboat and continued our journey Lake 227 is reachable mostly by way of these other connecting lakes, which are kept unpolluted as references for other experiments.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLake 227 may be the least well-known and most well-studied lake in the world,\u201d Paterson had told me earlier as we dragged on our heavy rain gear at the lab. More than 200 published papers have used data from Lake 227 over the last five decades. According to Paterson, a Czech scientist once visited, claiming that the research had been his inspiration to study lakes. When he laid eyes on the lake, he fell to his knees and said, \u201cNow I can die satisfied.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Twenty minutes after setting out, we docked the boat and climbed a short trail lined with pink lady\u2019s slippers. Two University of Manitoba grad students were waiting for us at the lake. A man and a woman in their mid-twenties, the pair were packed inside heavy rain-repellent costumes, but somehow managed to look cheerful, if a little sweaty. The researchers had come to perform a simple task that had been conducted every week during the ice-free season for the past forty-eight years: pour some form of phosphorus into the water. Phosphorus is \u201cpure plant food in its most bioavailable form,\u201d Paterson says. \u201cIt\u2019s like steak for algae.\u201d But the element is also versatile: it can nourish a potato, or a pig, or a bit of phytoplankton, or a human. Our reliance on phosphorus is the reason \u00adeutrophication is a global problem, affecting many thousands of lakes.<\/p>\n<p>In 1669, a German alchemist named Hennig Brand tried to make the Philosopher\u2019s Stone by distilling urine, and instead produced the first tiny sample of white phosphorus\u2014which was later discovered to be a vital ingredient in all fertilizers, \u00adincluding guano. By the first decades of the nineteenth century, the trade in seabird guano was booming, as farmers in Europe and North America spread more and more on their fields. The guano islands of Peru were heavily mined for the stuff and the mountains of seabird excrement started to shrink. Luckily, by the beginning of the twentieth century, scientists had \u00adlearned how to extract phosphate from rocks.<\/p>\n<p>The abundance of phosphates made possible the modern intensive agricultural practices that allow farmers to achieve greater yields than manure-dependent farmers in the past could have dreamed of. Phosphates also changed farming from a \u00adrelatively closed system\u2014nutrient travels from crop to animal to manure and back again\u2014to a more open one. Now we pull phosphorus out of the earth and briefly employ it before it travels out the other side of the human ecosystem, ending up in lakes and oceans.<\/p>\n<p>Once detergent companies had been forced to reduce phosphate use, and city wastewater systems had been updated, the Great Lakes saw an eventual reduction in algae levels. But it was a short-lived victory. The algae have returned in force, \u00adcreating dead zones in Lake Erie. This time, the phosphorus comes primarily from the intensive agricultural practices that produce our food\u2014not from our soap. For many scientists, the hope lies in closing the phosphorus loop.<\/p>\n<div id=\"body-text\">\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">R<\/span><span class=\"smallcaps\">ick gamble<\/span> is the mayor of Dunnottar, a small cottage community on the west side of Lake Winnipeg, near the bottom of the south basin. Rural municipalities often store sewage in lagoons at the outskirts of town, leaving it to sit so that bacteria can devour the organic particles. Although rudimentary, the system works pretty well. It just doesn\u2019t always remove all the nutrients.<\/p>\n<p>Gamble and I leaned up against his truck to take in the view. Dunnottar has three oblong lagoons lined up in a row. To see them, we had to drive up a berm and along a narrow lane that rimmed the edge. In one of the lagoons, the water was dark, like black coffee. Several families of ducks paddled through the tall grass and cattails by the shore, peacefully snacking on insects.<\/p>\n<p>This might be one of the most innovative sewage-treatment facilities in the world. After being cleaned in these lagoons, the water undergoes a quick blast of ultraviolet light to kill any remaining bacteria, and comes out the other side crystal clear and\u2014according to tests\u2014\u00adperfectly drinkable. \u201cNot that most people would want to,\u201d says Gamble, laughing.<\/p>\n<p>Before it even reaches the filtration system, however, water from the lagoons seeps through the field via a system of pipes. The grasses take up the \u00adnutrients, \u00adremoving most of the phosphorus and nitrogen. When the grass around the \u00adlagoon gets too tall, it is simply mowed, and offcuts are used as compost for a community garden.<\/p>\n<p>At the moment, Dunnottar\u2019s \u00adrather rustic treatment process yields cleaner water than some traditional facilities, says Gamble. \u201cThey couldn\u2019t touch us,\u201d he brags\u2014and it cost only about $650,000 to install, compared to the millions sometimes necessary for chemical treatment. The achievement might be only a drop in the bucket compared to the tsunami of nutrients flowing in from the prairies every year, but in his modest way, Gamble has managed to close the phosphorus loop for wastewater.<\/p>\n<p>The idea of recycling nutrients has not been lost on other scientists and water-quality advocates. Several organizations are working on ways to build temporary reservoirs and artificial wetlands upriver from Lake Winnipeg in order to hold back the spring runoff that carries so much of the phosphorus that ends up in the lake. Gordon Goldsborough, for example, a wetland researcher at the University of Manitoba, is developing a simple rig that grows cattails on eutrophic lakes.<\/p>\n<p>Constructed out of bread trays and foam, the device floats over deeper waters where cattails can\u2019t normally grow. \u201cIt produces biomass and pulls phosphorus out of the environment. If you harvest those plants, you\u2019re taking the phosphorus with them,\u201d says Goldsborough. \u201cIt creates a perfect solution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Such optimistic gambits are the stock-in-trade of organizations such as the Lake Winnipeg Foundation (<span class=\"smallcaps\">lwf<\/span>), which Gamble, a former construction worker, \u00adfounded back in the late \u201990s. He suspected that some of his neighbours might also be anxious about the algae and want to do something. He started holding meetings; in time, they grew into the <span class=\"smallcaps\">lwf<\/span>. The organization now employs half a dozen people in downtown Winnipeg and is central in the fight against the lake\u2019s eutrophication problem.<\/p>\n<p>Nutrient loading is such a complex issue, and involves so many contributors and stakeholders\u2014Indigenous communities, cottagers, fishermen, farmers, the City of Winnipeg, and other levels of government\u2014that efforts to solve it have consistently been trapped in a cycle of blame shifting. One of the most significant divides is over which is the bigger problem: municipal wastewater or manure runoff. The <span class=\"smallcaps\">lwf<\/span> tries to strike a conciliatory tone between these warring perspectives, while building public awareness.<\/p>\n<p>The real challenge is to take a complicated problem that most people find overwhelming and make it simple enough for people to believe it\u2019s worth caring about\u2014all without pointing fingers or overstating it.<\/p>\n<p>In 2013, a <span class=\"smallcaps\">cbc<\/span> story declared that Lake Winnipeg was \u201cthe world\u2019s most threatened lake\u201d\u2014other media outlets ran similar headlines. But the hyperbole struck Karen Scott as suspicious. After looking around online, she found that the headlines misstated an announcement that had been issued by an organization called the Global Nature Fund, which currently \u00adincludes 106\u00a0lakes in its worldwide stewardship program. Of those, only four had been submitted for the \u201cthreatened lake of the year\u201d laurels. Conclusion: Lake Winnipeg is absolutely not the world\u2019s most threatened lake, and never has been.<\/p>\n<p>The panic over zebra mussels is, for Scott, another example of media hype. In\u00a02015, Pip called the lake a \u201clost cause\u201d because of the incursion of the mollusc over the last few years\u2014her phrase was used as a headline by Global News. But while zebra mussels can be bad news, Scott says, they do not spell doom. No one denies that they can be devastating. They filter particulates out of the water so it becomes clearer; darkness-loving species, such as pickerel, are pushed farther down, crowding the fish already there into a smaller and smaller area. The zebra mussels also consume algae-eating plankton, leading to more blooms. And because they are such intense filter feeders, they accumulate \u00adtoxins in their tissues, becoming a danger to the fish and birds that eat them.<\/p>\n<p>The changes wrought by zebra mussels are so profound that Scott thinks we need to view Lake Winnipeg as a new ecosystem and research it accordingly\u2014but not act as if it\u2019s facing Judgment Day.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">O<\/span><span class=\"smallcaps\">ver the past decade,<\/span> the debate over how to fix Lake Winnipeg has latched onto a specific\u2014and, some say, too convenient\u2014target: hogs. Over the course of a year, Manitoba supports a population of nearly 8 million swine, many of which are destined to be devoured in other provinces as well as in the United States. Hogs are prolific shitters. The province, which has a human population of \u00adroughly 1.28 \u00admillion, must therefore manage the waste output of animals that produce up to four times as much excrement as \u00adhumans. To achieve this feat, they put it all in holding ponds.<\/p>\n<p>Peter Leavitt, a biologist from the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, argues that the rise in algal blooms coincides with the rise of agriculture in the province. Leavitt was commissioned by the former <span class=\"smallcaps\">ndp<\/span> government in Manitoba to report on changes in Lake Winnipeg\u2019s water quality, and his findings were a factor in the creation of the Save Lake Winnipeg Act in 2011. The problem, Leavitt explains, is that a heavy snowmelt and an overland spring flood can carry that phosphorus-rich pig manure into the streams and \u00adrivers that feed the lake. In sum: \u201cYou\u2019ve got too many damn pigs and cattle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 2008, the province introduced restrictions on the building of new hog barns and manure-storage facilities, in large part to limit the amount of hog manure travelling to the lake. By 2011, when the moratorium was expanded, the number of hog farms in Manitoba had diminished by more than half. Manitoba farmers have been \u00adfrustrated by the economic impediments. After all, there\u2019s a huge and hungry market to feed. That year, Don Flaten, a soil scientist, reassured farmers at a pork-\u00adindustry event that phosphorus runoff from their hog farms accounted for only a small percentage of the nutrients flowing into the lake.<\/p>\n<p>This past March, the hog farmers were vindicated. Manitoba\u2019s Progressive Conservative government introduced the Red Tape Reduction and Government Efficiency Act, which, among other things, makes it easier for hog producers to expand their operations. Policy changes such as this highlight the gridlock in the \u00adenvironmental movement. The \u00adfarmers are meeting a genuine demand, and the government is serving an economically \u00adviable industry. They may be harming the lake\u2014whether inadvertently or \u00adcarelessly\u2014but they are also reflecting our society and its concerns and appetites. Which is why Dave Courchene, a \u00adprominent Anishinaabe elder, doesn\u2019t believe that meaningful change will come only from the top. \u201cUntil we find the way to have a much more sacred relationship with the land,\u201d he says, \u201cwe\u2019re going to continue down this path of destroying the future for our own children.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the day we met, he wore a baseball cap over his wavy grey ponytail, and lounged in the booth at a local restaurant, picking at a tray of nachos and cracking jokes. (\u201cWe had running water when I\u00a0was growing up: I ran down to the lake to get the water, and then I ran it home.\u201d) Courchene says that over the course of his life, he has seen Lake Winnipeg transform from a clean source of drinking water \u00adinto a danger to swimmers and residents. He\u2019s heard every sort of promise and justification along the way. \u201cThere\u2019s so much rhetoric that goes on,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople say the right things, and that\u2019s about all they do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Known as Leading Earth Man, Courchene does environmental \u00adadvocacy work around the world and is the \u00adfounder of the Turtle Lodge, a healing and cultural centre. In the summer of 2015, elders, grandmothers, and traditional \u00adknowledge-keepers from across North America met at Courchene\u2019s home community of Sagkeeng First Nation to participate in a water ceremony on behalf of Lake Winnipeg. Many brought jars of water from lakes and river systems in their own communities and carried them out into the lake in a procession of small motorboats and pontoons.<\/p>\n<p>Nature\u2019s laws are self-enforcing, Courchene says, and you reap what you sow: \u201cIf\u00a0you put love into the water, you get love back. If you put pollutants in the water, then that\u2019s what you get back. I believe there\u2019s a lot of hope\u2014it\u2019s just a matter of continuing the work that\u2019s being done to create greater awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"advertisement nocontent robots-nocontent\">\n<div id=\"adslot4\" data-google-query-id=\"CN6H4cDQ_tQCFRdmfgodkr0Ktw\"><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">O<\/span><span class=\"smallcaps\">n my last day<\/span> travelling around Lake Manitoba, I visit Pip. She lives alone at the end of a narrow lane through a thick stand of trees that is surrounded on all sides by farmland. In the late \u201990s, Pip registered her forty acres as a conservation site and allowed natural vegetation to \u00adreturn; in a fifteen-acre field at the back, she planted 6,000 trees. The decision didn\u2019t make her popular with her neighbours.<\/p>\n<p>As we talk, Pip once again reviews the problems in Lake Winnipeg: the toxins, the wetland destruction, the rapacious zebra mussels. The list goes on and on, like an \u00adincantation. \u00adUnlike the campaigns of \u00adstudied urgency and optimism run by \u00adorganizations such as the <span class=\"smallcaps\">lwf<\/span>, Pip\u2019s gloomy take on the lake isn\u2019t calculated. She\u2019s been listening to cautious statements and hopeful solutions for the last five decades, and despite all that calibrated energy, little has changed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t see that lake being rescued, certainly not in my lifetime,\u201d she concludes. \u201cYou would have to get all of these different contributors to the problem to stop doing what they\u2019re doing, and that\u2019s not going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I say goodbye to Pip and drive to Hillside Beach. It\u2019s a hot day, and sunbathers have staked out plots for their lounge chairs, coolers, dogs, and toddlers. \u00adAlthough murky, the water was just the right temperature for a swim. I notice a woman wading with her two children. The younger one bends his face down to the water, just a few feet from where it ripples gently against the shore. \u201cDon\u2019t drink the water,\u201d the mother says sharply. \u201cIt\u2019s yucky.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thewalrus.ca\/anger-and-indifference-on-lake-winnipeg\/\">The Walrus Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<footer id=\"credit\">\n<section>\n<section>\n<section class=\" dynamic-widget widget text-9 widget_text\">\n<div class=\"textwidget\"><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/footer>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Mark Mann, Illustration by Irma Kniivla, Feature, The Walrus Foundation, Toronto, Jun. 26, 2017 Is the viscous green sludge that coats the water an ecological disaster\u2014or just a nuisance for beachgoers? Lake winnipeg is large and changes colour. As summer progresses, parts of it slowly shift from milky mahogany to bluish green, and by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1751,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750\/revisions\/1751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}