Protecting 'The New Oil'

Professor Barry B. Boyer

The Buffalo Niagara region's most valuable resource – its abundance of fresh water – was the topic of an innovative all-day conference at the Center for the Arts.

"Great Lakes Connecting Channels" brought together interested parties from the worlds of science, government, law and environmental activism to talk about safeguarding the health of the lakes. "Water is the new oil," said UB Law Professor Barry B. Boyer, one of the chief organizers of the conference. "And we've got one-fifth of the world's fresh water on our doorstep. But we need to do a better job of protecting it and using it wisely."

The June 12 conference, co-sponsored by the Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy, focused on the rivers and straits that link the five Great Lakes. "These connecting channels are the places where things come together -- nations, people, pollutants and problems," Boyer said. "As a result, many of them are among the most degraded areas in the region."

The conference was also part of a regional commemoration of the centennial of a landmark treaty between Canada and the United States, the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909.

Visit the 1909/2009
Boundary Waters Treaty website

The morning's speakers addressed the state of scientific understanding and the opportunities that research offers to solve the problem of pollution, and protect the fish and wildlife that use the Niagara River and other connecting channels. The afternoon sessions looked at the need for good government and the reasons that attempts to improve the connecting channels often have failed. The conference's final speaker was the Canadian ambassador to the United States, Michael Wilson.

"I was pleased with the mix of people we had," Boyer said. "It was kind of a risky venture, because you don't usually put scientists and policymakers in the same room, and you don't usually put activists and academics in the same room. But we set out to be as inclusive as possible, and it worked."