[All] Canadian Water Network

Mon Mar 9 01:33:24 EDT 2015

Hi folks
I met Mark Servos and Rob DeLoe from the Canadian Water Network and they are wonderful folks doing top notch research. Unfortunately I observe their statements are highly monitored. I have literally seen special ops guys in black suits with earpieces who are miked up attending their events. The same thing was seen at the NEB hearings I attended regarding Line 9. The amount of monitoring around the public statements is outrageous. The first time I witnessed it was when Mark Servos went to City of Waterloo council to discuss the endocrine disruption in the Grand. This was a presentation on the issue and not a formal council meeting but it was held at City Hall.  He was informative but had to carefully craft his words as to not create alarm with the things he was saying, relying heavily upon technical terms and use of legal parse. There was one well suited man who oddly asked them a question during his presentation regarding the possibility of pumping in water from the Arctic to supply the Tar Sands with water. It was completely out of context considering the theme of the presentation but Mr. Servos replied it could in theory be done by why do it? It's not worth the risk in his view.
There's a great deal of issues that the Canadian Water Quality Network are aware of. Contamination in the Athabasca, the impacts of endocrine disruptors, the issues surrounding long term consequences of pesticides such as Atrazine etc. Many of these issues are well known within the scientific community however there are political consequences when the agencies so strongly bound to the funding of public services such as wildlife monitoring (sponsored by Syngenta) or the Conservation Authorities (often sponsored by gravel pits, engineering firms, pesticide manufacturers, oil companies etc.) Research funding can come from all sorts of interesting places so one cannot be too publicly critical in spite of the data but rest assured, they know plenty more about what's happening but the gag factors they deal with are pretty outrageous. Sometimes the information is only accessible if your willing to pay a hundred or more to view certain publications etc. leaving the public in the position to glean data off of crumbs that trickle down through public media. 
In terms of Endocrine disrupting chemicals they're finally starting to get some hard core economic/health analysis on the situation. This report was published March 5/ 2015 states it is linked to lowered IQ, male infertility, diabetes and obesity and costs the UK 209 billion US currency, annually. 
http://www.newswise.com/articles/estimated-costs-of-endocrine-disrupting-chemical-exposure-exceed-150-billion-annually-in-eu

View attachment for graphs. 
Lulu 

      From: Bob Burtt <bobburtt at gmail.com>
 To: Susan Koswan <susankoswan at execulink.com> 
Cc: GREN <all at gren.ca> 
 Sent: Sunday, March 8, 2015 6:50 PM
 Subject: Re: [All] Canadian Water Network

Hi Susan...There have been a number of stories in The Record over a
number of years about prescription drugs, particularly birth control
pills getting through sewage treatment plants.
As a consequence male fish have been found with female traits.
The region has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on sewage
treatment over the last decade or so, and that no doubt, has had a
positive effect on water quality in the Grand, but it always seemed to
me that whatever improvements were made to the STPs, it was only
enough to play catch up and never enough to get ahead the impact of a
growing population.

I remember writing stories 10 or 12 years ago about a part of the
river at Blair, downstream from the Kitchener STP that was considered
toxic to fish. Improvements to Kitchener's plant were expected to
improve that situation, but I don't know what the situation would be
now.
Sandra Cooke at the GRCA headed up studies about that,but the
authority was always unwilling to release too much information back
then.

Not sure, but I think you might access Mark's work if you did a search.

On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 2:33 PM, Susan Koswan <susankoswan at execulink.com> wrote:
> Thank you Tony,
>
>
>
> I keep going back to thinking that our work needs to focus on closing the
> gap between government and academia/research and widening the gap between
> academia/research and corporate/private/foundation money. My fundraising
> work in not-for-profits was far too often swerved to meet the
> parameters/needs/goals of the funding body rather than to serve the needs
> and meet the mandate of the not-for-profit agency. It’s been many years, but
> I expect it has got worse rather than better. Academia should serve “the
> people”.
>
>
>
> I just keep struggling to find what the keystone or catalyst is that is
> central to creating the cascade of positive changes we’d like to see happen.
> It starts with removing Harper, but the core is still rotten...
>
>
>
> Susan K
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Tony Maas [mailto:tony at maas-strategies.com]
> Sent: March-08-15 2:02 PM
> To: Susan Koswan
> Cc: GREN
> Subject: Re: [All] Canadian Water Network
>
>
>
> I have had plenty of dealings - am currently working on a contract for them.
>
>
>
> Suggest you reach out to Dr. Mark Servos if you are interested in
> understanding what CWN researchers are doing on the Grand. He is a busy guy
> but I imagine he’d be willing to speak to GREN. Note that CWN is a national
> network, so they have projects in place across the country.
>
>
>
> Tony
>
> On Mar 8, 2015, at 1:57 PM, Susan Koswan <susankoswan at execulink.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Hi GRENers,
>
> Has anyone ever had any dealings with the Canadian Water Network?
>
>
>
> http://www.cwn-rce.ca/index.php/
>
>
>
> Met up with some acquaintances last night (mostly health-related
> professions) and they were talking about the terrible things that are in the
> Grand River – artificial sweeteners and oestrogen in particular. With such a
> vast number of water professionals in our neck of the woods, you’d think the
> Grand and our acquifers would be pristine and state of the art. Instead, we
> still have toxic sediments and the residuals of Crompton etc fouling the
> system, a water-treatment system that can do nothing for chemical pollutants
> and an aged wastewater treatment system that cannot handle chemical
> pollutants and seriously needs to be upgraded (although I understand that is
> in the works).
>
>
>
> Perhaps the conversation is happening and work is being done between the
> researchers and our decision makers and I just don’t know about it, but if
> it isn’t, should it be a high priority for GREN to be a conduit for that
> conversation?
>
>
>
> I don’t feel like buying an RO system...
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Susan K

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