DORVAL – Students from 10 schools gathered near Dorval\u2019s border with Lachine to clean up the Bouchard Creek, as an early Earth Day event. But instead of finding a mildly polluted stream, which a previous year\u2019s cleanup had scrubbed, they ended up hauling piles of debris out of a creek that is uncomfortably close to the Montreal suburb\u2019s aquifer.<\/p>\n
In other words: it becomes drinking water.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was shocked when I saw in what state our drinking water was,\u201d said Maja Vodanovic, a West Island artist who organized the cleanup. \u201cIt\u2019s filled with garbage!\u201d<\/p>\n
During the cleanup, students pulled an old picnic umbrella, four plastic patio chairs, a half-dozen tires and three rusty and dented buckets of toxic chemicals out of the creek.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of these chemicals are toxic to fish, toxic to aquatic microorganisms,\u201d said Montreal environmentalist Daniel Green, with the Societ\u00e9 pour vaincre la pollution. Those chemicals, he added, are also toxic to people.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why it has a skull and crossbones- it will kill you- don\u2019t drink it!\u201d<\/p>\n
The volunteer event served as a disappointing lesson to some of the students there, like ninth-grader Alex McIntyre.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a kid, our parents tell us to make good decisions, and they\u2019re adults. So when we see this, we see adults are making terrible decisions by throwing their waste into the rivers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As for what caused the creek\u2019s precarious condition, there is a lot of blame to go around: some blame the nearby industrial parks for illegal dumping- there are several storage facilities in a secluded area. Some blame pipes that run into the creek- some of which illegally tap into sewage lines or storm drains. Others blame everyday people who are just looking for a place to litter in the dark.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe find all kinds of things: we find sofas, we find tires,\u201d said Dorval Mayor Edgar Rouleau. \u201cThat stuff doesn\u2019t just come through a pipe. It\u2019s somebody who throws something away.\u201d<\/p>\n