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From the Orilla Packet and Times online

Natives look to Ottawa for Site 41 solution - 'Permanent' campsite set up at proposed dump location near Elmvale

May 11, 2008 - Posted By Douglas Glynn, Midland Free Press 

ELMVALE – Members of Beausoleil First Nation have established a permanent campsite at the entrance to Site 41 - and have put the call out to other First Nations people across the country to join with them.

Vicki Monague, the group’s spokesperson, said they are holding a peaceful protest and intend to stay until the plan to open the landfill is stopped.

"We will continue to hold ceremonies and to drum," she said.

Monague has appealed to First Nations people across Canada to come to the campsite and support the protest because "the water is being threatened.

"We want the federal government to intervene on behalf of First Nations people to protect the Alliston aquifer," she said.

About 25 members of the group set up camp in a farm field opposite the dump on Friday to protest the landfill. But what was to have been a weekend of ceremonies to honour the water, moon, the sun and the earth has quickly become a permanent campsite.

Monague has also launched a petition calling on the chief and council of Beausoleil First Nation to immediately take action against Site 41 by way of a band council resolution and to exercise its power and influence to overturn the landfill’s approval.

The campers were joined briefly Saturday by Mohawk environmentalist Danny Beaton and elders from the United States and Ontario.

Elders from California, Utah and Cape Croker have aligned themselves with the Mohawk and Chippewa of Ontario in calling on the provincial government to stop Site 41.

At a Toronto news conference on Friday, elder Robertjohn Knapp of California called for a halt to "the poisoning of one of the purest water sources on Earth."

(William Shotyk, a geochemistry professor at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, who has tested the water from the area of the proposed dump site, has described it as "kind of like the old-growth forest of natural waters... the best water on Earth.")

Knapp said he had travelled to Toronto to ask Premier Dalton McGuinty to "unplug his ears" and listen to people in the community who don't want the landfill.

Beaton told Friday’s news conference that First Nations people do not want the Alliston Aquifer "drained, raped and poisoned. These sacred waters that belong to our children."

Beaton, who last November walked from Elmvale to Queen’s Park with Site 41 critic Steve Ogden, has also launched a Facebook protest against the landfill.

"But," he says, "I’ve yet to hear back from the environment ministry or the premier."

Simcoe North MPP Garfield Dunlop has introduced a private members’ bill in the Legislature that would, if passed, effectively kill the landfill.

Provincial NDP leader Andrea Horwath has said she opposes the landfill and "heartily supports the advocacy work being done by Beaton and like-minded activists."

Cindy Hood, district manager of the Environment Ministry’s Barrie office was quoted by Canadian Press on Friday as saying the province has hired an environmental officer to oversee the construction and operation of the site.

"All the permits that have been issued for this site have been done after there has been a very comprehensive and thorough review of all the data," Hood told CP.

"We've had scientists, hydrologists and engineers do a comprehensive review ... to ensure that the site can be developed and operated in a manner that it will not be harmful to the environment."

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From Danny Beaton's website

Stop Dump Site 41

There is a crisis taking place in Ontario in a small town next to Georgian Bay called Tiny Township.
 
The Minister of Environment has approved the relocation of ground water, the pumping of 225 million litres of water this April 2009. It is the water of the deep Alliston Aquifer below the proposed Dump Site 41.

In a recent report, German scientist Dr William Shotyk noted the water bubbling from the Surface Springs is so clean the only match for its purity is ice pulled from the bottom of Arctic ice cores from snows deposited thousands of years ago, well before any high-polluting industries existed. “This is kind of like the Old-Growth Forest of natural waters”, says William Shotyk, a geochemistry professor of the University of Heidelberg in Germany. It’s the best water on earth – in Tiny Township.

On January 29, 2009 myself, Maude Barlow, Senior Advisor on Water to the United Nations General Assembly and Chair of the Council of Canadians, Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada, Stephen Ogden, Leader of Citizens for Safe Water, Dan McDermott, Director of the Sierra Club Ontario and Roger Langen of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF) were gathered at Queen’s Park Press Gallery to Launch Facebook Petition Campaign to Stop Dump Site 41. The Facebook Petition is directed to Premier Dalton McGuinty and the Minister of Environment, John Gerretsen.

Since this Coalition of environmentalists was formed signatures and letters are urgently needed from teachers, students and the public opposed to the destruction of our Surface Springs here in Georgian Bay.

These Springs we have here in Tiny Township, Ontario, Canada are a natural resource of unprecedented/ unimaginable beauty and healing for our children’s future, to learn from and survive. We have Maude Barlow and Elizabeth May, two leaders of Canada, opposed to this atrocity as well as Dan McDermott and Roger Langen, as witnesses to these facts at our press conference January 29, 2009.

I am a Mohawk environmentalist asking people to support this Facebook Petition to protect life because water is the lifeblood we all have to stand up for now before it is lost for our children’s future.

Sincerely,

Danny Beaton
Turtle Clan, Mohawk Nation