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It seems a very pleasant way for a lawyer to go after new business -- sail around Lake Ontario on a seven-metre yacht, keeping an eye out starboard and port for potentially litigable accidents -- kind of like a waterborne ambulance-chaser. But for environmental lawyer Mark Mattson, his summertime cruise for cases is hardly lucrative. As the Lake Ontario Keeper, he represents the lake, and the lake has little in the way of tangible assets. It's liquid, but has no liquidity.
Of course, Mattson's not in it for the money, and his early days on the lake helped form his volunteer ethos concerning the waterbody. "I think growing up and spending all my summers on Wolfe Island (near Kingston, Ont.) and spending all my time on the water made me appreciate the importance of having uncontaminated land and water," says Mattson. "Plus, my early association with area fishers and hunters and seeing the importance they place on eating the fish, ducks and geese and the role it plays for their families and cultural life makes me sympathetic to their concerns."
But he hasn't quit his day job. He still maintains a more remunerative practice doing a little criminal work, Ontario Energy Board hearings and the like, to finance his forays on the lake and to keep himself fed.
But since joining up with Robert Kennedy Jr.'s environmental group, the WaterKeeper Alliance, becoming the group's 67th keeper (and the only one responsible for an entire Great Lake), he's been devoting a full six months of the year to Lake Ontario, pro bono.
The WaterKeeper Alliance's roots go back to the 1960s when a group of fishermen, disgusted with the fetid condition of the Hudson River in New York State, began investigating and suing industrial and municipal polluters along the river's shores. By 1998, over 150 successful legal actions were filed against Hudson River polluters. Their work was successful and it's now one of the cleanest rivers along the North Atlantic. The alliance has since grown to 85 keepers acting as advocates on behalf of water bodies throughout North and Central America.
Mattson's own environmental advocacy roots go back to his 1997 co-founding of the Environmental Bureau of Investigation (EBI),...