Environment committee  Mercury is mostly transported into the lakes now through the atmosphere, so it's atmospheric deposition. One of the major sources is coal-fired thermal power plants in the U.S., and a measurable source is from China.

Environment committee  I can't answer the question because we don't have a good fix on the amount of various kinds of pollutants, including phosphorus, coming from urban areas and agricultural areas. If we had good information, I could answer your question, but we don't have the monitoring data to answ

Environment committee  I don't know of any areas that would be comparable to the areas of concern that were originally designated, but certainly we do have to be worried about the whole lake effects in Erie and Ontario and in Georgian Bay. I think that is going to keep people busy for a long time.

Environment committee  Where we've seen significant decline is in the government science departments: Environment Canada and Fisheries and Oceans. One of the important things that every one of us speakers has mentioned is the need for environmental monitoring and better environmental monitoring. Pat

Environment committee  May I add to that? Except for this year, we've seen a very steady decline in the ice cover of the lakes. Much of the evaporation from those lakes occurs in the winter period. You see a lot of water going into the atmosphere from the lakes in the cold season. If you have them cov

Environment committee  Also, we have to remember that the fish are rather mobile creatures. If you think of an area as being a good place for controlling fish and you designate that as an area to control, you have to remember that those fish probably came from somewhere a lot further away, upstream, or

Environment committee  What has been found recently is that if you use ozone in water treatment, or in waste water treatment, you can remove many of those harmful chemicals that are getting to be pervasive in our water systems, the endocrine disrupters and the flame retardants and other things, which w

Environment committee  I have a paper at home that would give you the chemical reaction and I would be happy to send it to you.

Environment committee  No, I'd be happy to.

Environment committee  It's a magic bullet, not the magic bullet.

Environment committee  On the question of toxic chemicals or chemicals of mutual concern, as they're sometimes called now, I think we need to take the kind of approach you suggested, a more preventive approach. I think our approach now is mostly to assume that all chemicals in the environment are benig

Environment committee  I understand that it's an attempt, at least in part, to monitor more effectively those washes of nutrients, phosphorus, into the lakes in the runoff events. Up until now we've been monitoring only monthly or weekly, or something like that, and missed the big events that dumped lo

Environment committee  It's absolutely essential, sir.

Environment committee  Late last year.

Environment committee  It's a little less than what we had hoped for, but it has done two things. It has helped to improve most of the highly polluted areas around the lakes and it has engaged local citizens, and local municipalities, in a very extensive way, which I think has been very healthy for sup