The British Columbia attorney general’s office has quashed a joint effort by a Canadian environmental group and a labor union to end the dumping of toxic sewage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, an international body of water off the northern coast of Washington state and the southern coast of B.C. Victoria and other nearby Canadian cities dump more than 20 million gallons of untreated sewage into the strait every day, and the Canadian government has closed off more than 30 square miles of the strait to fishing because of the discharges. The Sierra Legal Defense Fund and the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union had filed suit to force the cities to treat their waste, but under Canadian law the attorney general’s office was able to kill the suit. Canadian Environment Minister David Anderson argues that the unique movements of waters in the strait treat the sewage naturally, “one of the few places in the world where this occurs.”
