New Bill to Recognize Legal Rights of All Water Bodies in New York State

What if bodies of water were guaranteed the kinds of legal rights that would criminalize their destruction? What if communities had the authority to enact laws that prevented pollution, extraction, and waste-dumping?

This would be the case under a new bill introduced into the New York State Assembly by Patrick Burke on Friday. If it becomes law, New York Assembly Bill AO5156A, the Great Lakes and State Waters Bill of Rights, would recognize “unalienable and fundamental rights to exist, persist, flourish, naturally evolve, regenerate and be restored” for the Great Lakes and other watersheds and ecosystems throughout New York State.

"All people deserve healthy ecosystems and clean water, and recognizing the inherent rights of nature to exist and flourish is the best way to protect this,” says Assemblyman Burke. “Protecting one watershed or regulating toxins one at a time isn't enough. All New Yorkers are connected through our water, and so this bill protects all of us."

Representative Burke previously introduced an earlier draft of this bill in 2022. The new version incorporates feedback from the community and expands ecological rights beyond the Great Lakes watershed to include all the waters of New York.

It also empowers municipalities and counties to democratically enact rights of nature laws for their local ecosystems. Many states have forbidden this practice. In addition, the new bill contains provisions to protect treaty rights for indigenous people and tribal nations in New York.

Burke represents New York’s 142nd district, made up of South Buffalo and the surrounding areas on and near the shore of Lake Erie. Buffalo is located less than 5 miles south of Lake Ontario.

This measure received overwhelming support in Burke’s constituent survey, including from Dr. Kirk Scirto, who received his medical doctorate at the University of Buffalo, teaches public health in the United States and internationally, and works as a clinician for the Tonawanda Seneca Nation.

"This bill means communities having the freedom to finally decide what corporations can and can't do in their backyards,” Dr. Scirto says. “It means communities having the power to say ‘No!’ to outsiders who'd steal their resources and leave behind only contamination. It means having the ability to protect our waters--and therefore our health. It means justice!"

“For States to take action could be a game-changer”

The law was drafted with the assistance of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) which has been at the forefront of the rights of nature movement for more than 20 years, and incorporates input from constituents and tribal members living in the NY and Great Lakes ecosystems. Since writing the first law to recognize legal rights of ecosystems in 2006, CELDF has partnered with more than 200 communities across the United States to enact community rights and rights of nature laws.

“The rights of nature movement is gaining momentum around the world as global warming, species extinction, fresh water scarcity, and climate-driven migration are all getting worse,” says CELDF’s Education Director Ben Price, who helped draft the law. “Meanwhile, the U.S. is being left behind. For states to take on these issues in the absence of federal action could be a game-changer, as it was for women's suffrage when the states led the way for years.”

The bill would also enshrine the right to a clean and healthy environment for all people and ecosystems within the State, the right to freedom from “toxic trespass,” and would prohibit the monetization of the waters of New York State.

The bill is of cross-border interest, and will be part of an upcoming symposium on the health of the Great Lakes in Toronto in March where CELDF will be presenting.

“Serious threats” to the waters of New York

Lake Erie and Lake Ontario provide drinking water to 6.2 million New Yorkers. All told, the Great Lakes provide drinking water for more than 40 million people, contain 95% of all the surface freshwater in the United States, and make up the largest freshwater ecosystem on the planet.

But this ecosystem is struggling. According to experts, billions of gallons of raw sewage entering the lakes, increasing toxic algae blooms, invasive species, global warming, and both historic and ongoing industrial pollution represent serious threats to the ecosystem and human health.

According to Dr. Sherri Mason from Gannon University in Erie Pennsylvania over 22 million pounds of plastic are dumped in the Great Lakes annually.

Experts such as Daniel Macfarlane, Professor of Environment and Sustainability at Western Michigan University, say that the people of the U.S. have become “complacent” after early efforts to clean up the Great Lakes curtailed obvious issues such as the Cuyahoga, Buffalo, and Chicago rivers catching fire due to petrochemical waste dumping in the 1960’s.

In August 2014, a toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie linked to fertilizer and excrement from industrial farms shut down the drinking water supply to the city of Toledo, Ohio, home to 270,000 people, for 3 days.

This led to the community to overwhelmingly vote to pass a similar law to the one introduced by Assemblyman Burke called the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, which was also drafted by CELDF. The story of the pollution entering Lake Erie, the 2014 water shutdown, and the effort to protect the lake was profiled in a 2024 documentary produced by artist Andrea Bowers and titled What We Do to Nature, We Do to Ourselves.

The Rights of Nature movement

Recognizing the legal rights of nature is becoming increasingly popular around the world. Since CELDF assisted the people of Ecuador to amend their constitution to include rights of nature in 2008, the movement has seen hundreds of other laws passed in countries like Columbia, New Zealand, and Canada.

Just days ago, the Lewes District Council in East Sussex, England affirmed the Ouse River Charter, recognizing for the first time the rights of an English river.

The U.S. is lagging behind these international efforts, with only local communities asserting the rights of nature thus far. CELDF’s consulting director Tish O’Dell has worked with many of these communities.

“Brave people and communities have attempted to promote the new idea of rights of nature and challenge the current system, but we have never found a state legislator courageous enough to introduce such a law at the state level,” she says. “Representative Burke is the first to build on this grassroots movement for change.”