100 years as boundary waters partners
Canada, U. S. treaty celebration is here
Crossing the 5,500-mile border between the United States and Canada has gotten more complicated for citizens.
But the lakes, rivers, streams and ponds through which much of the international boundary passes still flow without a care, thanks mainly to a 100-year-old treaty that will be celebrated throughout the Buffalo Niagara region in the coming days.
Boundary Waters Week will be a truly binational happening, involving dozens of events and water-related themes starting Friday and ending June 14 in cities, towns and villages on both sides of the Niagara River from Buffalo to Youngstown and Fort Erie, Ont., to Niagara-on-the- Lake, Ont.
It will commemorate the 1909 signing of the Boundary Waters Treaty, widely regarded as the world’s first environmental treaty. The pact set out guidelines still in use for resolving disputes and potential disagreements between the U. S. and Canada over management of shared waters, from the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes to the remote streams of the Plains and the Rocky Mountains.
The banks of the Niagara, with Western New York on one side, the Ontario Peninsula on the other and the international boundary down the middle, were chosen for the celebration because “the Niagara River is one of only two geographic regions referred to in the treaty, which covers boundary waters from the Atlantic to the Pacific,” said Commissioner Sam Speck of the International Joint Commission.
The IJC, known mostly for the annual installation and removal of the Niagara River ice boom, has a far greater role in deciding what happens along the two nations’ common waterways.
It was formed specifically to administer the Boundary Waters Treaty, which was signed by the U. S. and Great Britain on Jan. 11, 1909, and held that those waters “shall not be polluted on either side to the injury of health or property on the other.”
Besides addressing environmental issues, the treaty established procedures to handle such problems as rising and falling water levels and the impact that a dam in one country might have on downriver communities in the other.
Through most of the 20th century and into this century, the independent commission — with three U. S. and three Canadian commissioners and about 50 staffers at offices in Washington, D. C., Ottawa, Ont., and Windsor, Ont. — has gone about its business without controversy.
“The idea is that the two countries don’t start with positions. They start with issues that need to be addressed,” said Speck, who was appointed to the commission by President George W. Bush in 2008, after eight years as Ohio’s natural resources director. He was also chairman of a binational group that developed the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact and Agreement.
The congenial relationship between respective nations’ commission members derives from a science-based approach that tries to resolve water management questions “to the common good,” Speck said.
One nation could prevail on a given issue with support from one of the other’s commissioners, “but I don’t think there’s been a 4-2 vote in 50 years,” Speck said. “There may be lots of discussion, but in the end decisions are made by consensus.”
Planning for Boundary Waters Week was headed by Stephen Brereton, Canadian consul general in Buffalo, and John R. Nay, his U. S. counterpart in Toronto.
Events will include musical performances by Great Lakes Swimmers, Sarah Harmer and Donna the Buffalo, plus a joint concert by the Niagara Youth Orchestra and Greater Buffalo Youth Orchestra.
Also featured is “Waterbody,” a boat dance in the Buffalo River, and a series of hikes and paddles in the Niagara Gorge and other sites.
The highlight of the centennial program will be a June 13 re-enactment of the 1909 ceremony on the Rainbow Bridge that created the IJC. Members of the commission will be joined at midpoint by leaders of municipalities along the Niagara River, including Buffalo and Niagara Falls, as well as consular officials and bridge and parks commissioners. A complete list of dates and times can be found at oursharedwaters. com.
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