HAMILTON, ONTARIO — A cross-border group of 38 leading Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River experts is urging the US and Canadian federal governments to use this week’s 100th anniversary celebrations of the Boundary Waters Treaty in Niagara Falls, Ontario, to re-negotiate “an outdated” Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, according to a June 8 press release from the Centre for Engineering and Public Policy at McMaster University, located in Hamilton.

“While officials should be commended for making strides in Great Lakes protection and restoration, the job is not even close to being done,” Gail Krantzberg, director of the McMaster Centre for Engineering and Public Policy, said in the release.

The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River basin is considered one of the largest economic units in the world. According to the press release, the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence ecosystem “currently faces more severe threats than ever before and the majority of these threats require united action simultaneously from Canada and the United States.”

Krantzberg called on the US and Canadian governments to take the opportunity during “this great and historic celebratory time” to address problems facing the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence ecosystem such as alien invasive species, toxic chemicals, climate change, air pollution, habitat loss, drinking water quality, and excessive nutrients.

According to the press release, a recent report released by Krantzberg and Jack Manno, associate professor at State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF), concluded that the “chronic and historic questions of responsibility, leadership and accountability remain as important as how many dollars governments promise for the binational Great Lakes. The prospects for a healthy Great Lakes in the 21st century would be substantially improved by updating and negotiating a new water quality agreement under the historic 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty.”

Groups calling for the revised agreement include: Great Lakes United; Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy; Great Lakes Research Consortium; University of Michigan; University of Waterloo, Ontario; and more.

Boundary Waters Week, an event celebrating 100 years of cooperation between Canada and the United States in managing the two nations’ shared waters, is scheduled to begin June 5 and run through June 14.

To read the full release, click here.

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