(Montreal) Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson signed a declaration Wednesday afternoon, supported by more than 260 mayors, which aims to transform the Great Lakes basin and the Saint-Laurent in “blue-green economic corridor of 21e century “.
Elected officials from these three large cities took advantage of the annual conference of the Alliance of Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities, which takes place in Montreal, to make the announcement.
The declaration constitutes a commitment to “attract blue and green industries” to the basin’s communities, such as high-tech companies that have strict standards for water consumption.
The signatory cities also commit to “building clean waterfront areas accessible to communities,” “establishing clean and renewable energy sources” and “developing sustainable commerce, mobility and tourism, and their integration through waterway”.
The United States Ambassador to Canada David Cohen moderated a discussion between the three mayors before the signing of the agreement.
He recalled that in 2021, Washington had announced a billion over five years to improve these freshwater ecosystems and that during President Joe Biden’s visit last year to Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had committed to pay 420 million over 10 years to preserve and restore the waters of the Great Lakes.
Ambassador Cohen asked elected officials to identify an achievement of which they are proud and which helps protect the water of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence basin.
Mayor Plante responded that the city’s wastewater ozonation plant is “an extremely positive project.”
This factory, which will cost a billion dollars and whose schedule has been postponed many times, is currently under construction.
“It is a plant that will improve the quality of the water for all other cities along the banks of the St. Lawrence as far as the ocean and it is Montrealers who pay,” underlined the mayor.
Plastic waste and eternal contaminants
According to Pierre Ouellet, delegate to the alliance’s board of directors, the pollution of microplastics and that of perfluorinated compounds (PFAS) are two of the main issues affecting the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes basin.
“Our drinking water plants were not necessarily designed to be able to treat this, and in any case, it would be at enormous cost. So, what we want is to be able to have protocols, both in the United States and in Quebec, to stop them at the source. »
Plastic bottles offered to participants
To reduce plastic pollution at the source, we can, for example, avoid using water bottles.
However, after the mayors signed the agreement, free plastic bottles of water were offered to the hundreds of participants gathered at the Marriott Le Château Champlain hotel for the annual conference of the Alliance of Great Lakes Cities and of the Saint Lawrence.
The alliance had contracted Glatz management, an American company specializing in events, to organize the event.
Questioned by The Canadian Press, Glatz Management indicated that it had asked the hotel not to offer plastic bottles to guests.
Hotel employees confirmed this claim, explaining that “an error had occurred” and that bottled water should not have been offered.
In Quebec, different organizations, such as the Quebec Council for Eco-responsible Events (CQEER), offer training, but also free tools to help organize sustainable and eco-responsible events.