资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

By Douglas Heaven

Michael Runkel/Getty Images

COURTS in Ohio are wrestling with an unusual question: how do you weigh up the rights of two people when one of them is a lake?

For several years, Lake Erie has been hit by an annual bloom of toxic algae caused by run-off from surrounding farmland. In some years, the contamination is so bad local people are warned against drinking water from their taps.

Existing environmental protections clearly weren’t working. So residents of Toledo, a city at the western end of the lake, took …

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