Environment

Nowhere to Hide from Pollution

An atlas published a hundred years ago would have proudly noted all the industries located beside water, each of them directly discharging its wastes into a river, stream or lake. No one thought anything of it because the environmental impact of what they were doing was not apparent.

Today we know better but the innocent sins of our ancestors have come back to haunt us. An atlas of today will point out the environmental danger zones around us, because pollution is a huge economic and social issue.

Like other communities, Hastings has its share of environmental problems. The Ontario government has spent millions trying to contain and clean up arsenic contamination from the old gold mines at Deloro.

Discharges from tanneries and other industries along the Trent and Moira have created a chemical soup of the Bay of Quinte, which bears the ignominious designation as one of the environmental hotspots of the Great Lakes.