MEDIA RELEASE
October 10, 2006International Joint Commission recommends improved notification, monitoring, reporting and prevention of spills in the Great Lakes Basin
[Mt. Clemens, Michigan] – The International Joint Commission today urged the all levels of government in the United States and Canada to coordinate and improve their efforts to protect the public from spills in the Great Lakes. In its Report on Spills in the Great Lakes Basin with a Special Focus on the St. Clair-Detroit River Corridor, released today, the Commission found there is need for further improvements in monitoring, notification, data collection, information sharing and spill prevention.
"Better monitoring, sharing of information and coordinated notification are the keys to protecting drinking water coming from the Great Lakes and safeguarding public health," said Dennis Schornack, U.S. co-chair of the Commission.
"While recognizing that the available data is incomplete and not comparable, the Commission found generally the number of spills appears to be declining," said the Rt. Honorable Herb Gray, Canadian co-Chair of the Commission, "but more can be done to assure the public that their drinking water drawn from the Great Lakes is safe."
In particular, the Commission found that better monitoring and shared data reporting are needed to determine accurately the real trends in spill incidents in the Great Lakes and particularly the St. Clair-Detroit River connecting channels. To address information gaps, it recommended that the responsible agencies at all levels of government in Canada and the United States develop a shared regional database for the Great Lakes basin that can be used to produce a comprehensive binational spill trend analysis.
Noting plans in Macomb and St. Clair counties to install monitoring equipment in the St. Clair River and Lake St. Clair, the Commission recommends that the United States and Canada work together with state, provincial and local governments to establish and conduct joint testing of government supported real-time monitoring and biomonitoring systems. Such systems should monitor for a wide range of potential chemical and biological contaminants and be integrated with hydraulic models of the St. Clair River.
Other areas for improvement identified by the Commission include recommendations to develop common protocols for communicating with the public, to clarify responsibility for costs of spill clean up, and to harmonize U.S. and Canadian spill prevention and enforcement, including stronger provision for spill containment.
Following a number of chemical spills in the St. Clair River in 2003 and 2004, the Commission examined the spill incidents in the St. Clair-Detroit Rivers connecting channels in an effort to determine whether there is an increasing trend in spills that might affect the public. The Commission also reviewed spill data for the Great Lakes and its other connecting corridors, but its primary focus was the St. Clair-Detroit River corridor.
In this report, spills include accidental or illicit discharges of substances (i.e. oils and hydrocarbons, chemicals and wastes) that cause or may cause harm to the environment or humans.
The Commission’s findings are underscored by the recent release of a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), entitled Better Information and Targeted Prevention Efforts Could Enhance Spill Management in the St. Clair–Detroit River Corridor (July 2006). Like the Commission, the GAO cited issues with data quality and management as well as with spill notification.
Both the GAO and Commission reports focus on spills to the corridor, however, the Commission report being released today also looks at spills to all of the Great Lakes and its major connecting channels.
For its part, the GAO report examines spills in the context of the U.S. Clean Water Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (Superfund), and directs its recommendations to U.S. agencies. The Commission report uses the Canada-U.S. Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement as its perspective and directs its recommendations to both countries.
Contact: John Nevin 202-256-1368 Nevinj@washington.ijc.org Nick Heisler 613-293-7144 Heislern@Ottawa.ijc.org
