Oct 12, 2015 — New York State Senator Chuck Schumer is speaking out against Montreal’s plan to dump two billion gallons of sewage into the St. Lawrence River next weekend. Schumer asked the Environmental Protection Agency to sit down with the Canadian government.

Schumer said the River should be protected from anything that could harm its ecosystem and hurt tourism. Schumer acknowledged Montreal is miles downstream from New York State, but he said dumping sewage into the St. Lawrence could be disastrous. “It’ll affect the birds, it’ll affect the fish that rely on the waterway and that could provide real problems for the St. Lawrence,” he said.

Schumer also acknowledged the United States has no jurisdiction over parts of the river that lie entirely in Canada. That’s why, he said, he’s trying a different approach and asked the EPA to sit down with both the U.S. and Canadian governments to work out a solution that would keep sewage out of the river. Schumer said, “We have a good relationship to Canada. We’re friendly. And I believe if our State Department said, 'Look we have to discuss this. This is causing grave concern on our side of the border,' the Canadians would.”

Montreal city officials have repeatedly said construction on a major highway left them no choice but to flush the sewers into the river. On October 18, sewage will be released from 26 spots along the St. Lawrence. Lee Willbanks, director of the environmental group Save the River said he welcomes the increased pressure. He said, "It doesn’t appear as if they planned for alternatives for the sewage as well as they planned for the planters on the streets and the pretty streetscape.”

Save the River has created a crowdsourcing site where anyone can share ideas on what Montreal should do with all that waste. “What I think we’re hoping with IdeaBuzz is that people would look at it, we’d get a critical mass of interest and thinking and the city would accept that this is the wrong course,“ Willbanks said.

The Canadian government already asked Montreal to halt its plan to release the sewage. Montreal’s mayor Denis Coderre shrugged off that request and accused Environment Canada of playing politics weeks before a national election. When he heard State Senator Pattie Ritchie had publically objected to Montreal’s plan last week, Coderre told Canadian reporters Ritchie should keep her focus on New York.