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'About a dozen' syringes found along Missisquoi Bay

'About a dozen' syringes found along Missisquoi Bay

A man with a cottage in Philipsburg, Que. is calling for something to be done after finding needles and syringes on his beach.

Robert Galbraith spends most summers picking up errant pieces of plastic, water bottles or shotgun shells, which wash up along the shore of the Missisquoi Bay.

But he has also begun finding needles and vaccine bottles that were discarded into Lake Champlain. He believes they're medical farm waste.

"It breaks my heart to see it," said Galbraith. "My kids were raised on this beach. They learned how to sail, fish, appreciate nature itself.

"It's quite an emotional situation."

Galbraith is a longtime advocate of cleaning up Lake Champlain, which is a natural habitat for about 80 species of fish and 300 species of birds.

Trash 2.5 feet deep

Local MP Denis Paradis agrees more needs to be done to clean the lake, adding that $7.5 million was allocated in this year's federal budget to aid in maintaining the lake.

"Apparently in the bottom of the lake, there is two and a half feet of garbage," said Paradis, "We have to get rid of that."

He also said the federal government is pushing for universal buffer zones to limit agricultural run-off.

"We're looking mostly for ten metres so the water does not go into the lake," he said.

Galbraith is skeptical that a government-funded cleanup is the answer.

"It has to be policed. You can't just throw money wildly here and there, in what I call lame-brain projects," he said.

In the end, any Canadian government has a limited ability to maintain Lake Champlain. Only the tip of the lake is in Canada — it extends south into Vermont and New York.