Experimental Lakes Area Closure a Financial Blunder, Say Greens
Grandview: The Green Party of Canada calls on the federal government to keep the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) research station open. Closure of ELA will cost Canadian tax payers $50 million to decommission the site while keeping it open would only be $2 million a year. “Do the math,” says Kate Storey, of the Dauphin Swan River Marquette Green Party. “This attack on science is a financial blunder.” Giving no reasons, the Harper government terminated funding to the facility, forcing it to close this March. Concerned citizens have suggested that the closure is a vendetta against environmentalists. Research coming out of the experimental lakes could be inconvenient to those wishing to ignore the effects of toxins on the water and on the health of Canadians. The Experimental Lakes station has operated as a unique, world-renowned centre for freshwater research in northwestern Ontario for about half-a-century. Studies done there hav