Pride and frustration — Windsor's Citizens Environment Alliance celebrates 40 years of green battles

Citizens Environment Alliance
628 Monmouth Rd., Windsor, Ontario, Canada N8Y 3L1

CEA in the News

Pride and frustration — Windsor's Citizens Environment Alliance celebrates 40 years of green battles

Plenty of victories, but green fight continues for Windsor-based Citizens Environment Alliance, a local voice for the environment.

By Pascal Hogue
Windsor Star · Published Dec 23, 2025

As 2025 comes to an end, a Windsor-based organization of activists and their supporters celebrates its 40th anniversary of hard-fought battles in defence of the local environment.

That longevity is a point of pride for the Citizens Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario (CEA), but its members say any celebration is tempered by the continued need for their green advocacy in the region.

“Forty years has seen a few victories, a lot of blood and sweat, and to a certain extent tears, but also frustration with the fact that we should be further ahead,” CEA executive director Derek Coronado told the Star.

Begun in 1985 as a citizens group focused on tackling toxic water pollution in the Great Lakes, the CEA has grown substantially in scope since. A non-profit organization that now consists of a dozen staff members and volunteers, as well as approximately 2,000 member-supporters, it’s been battling against smog and other air pollution; sprawling development that continues to pave over green spaces; and now climate change.

“We didn’t expect to expand our operations on other environmental issues,” Coronado said. But the CEA eventually did “because all environmental issues are intertwined and all came back to each other.”

Originally known as the Windsor and District Clean Water Alliance, the citizens’ group was founded by Derek’s late father, Ric Coronado, in response to a series of chemical spills from Sarnia’s Chemical Valley into the St. Clair River. A giant toxic “blob” had formed along the riverbed and threatened the water quality for tens of thousands of downstream residents in the region.

Decades of work in partnership with Canadian and American governments through binational agreements has resulted in meaningful — albeit not perfect — improvements, says Coronado.

“In my lifetime, in the 1970s, there were rivers in the Great Lakes that were literally catching on fire because they were so polluted. And to see now in the Detroit River the return of white sturgeons, river otters, and various species that have been gone from here after decades is to me a great joy.”

One major recent victory for the CEA was the inclusion of Ojibway Shores, Windsor’s last major undeveloped tract of land along the Detroit River, into the planned Ojibway National Urban Park.

The shoreline land was originally intended for industrial development but following protests and years of lobbying by environmental groups, the Windsor Port Authority transferred the parcels of land to Parks Canada in 2023.

The past year has presented new challenges. Cooperation with American counterparts has been a crucial part of the CEA’s work, given the transborder nature of environmental issues in the local region. But Coronado says that has been complicated by the Trump administration, which has “downgraded and defunded (the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) to a great extent.”

The Citizens Environment Alliance faces a new political context at home as well, where environmental concerns have taken a backseat to issues of affordability and economic development as Canada and its manufacturing heartland seek to respond to the trade war.

Coronado acknowledges an ebbing interest in the environment as an issue at the ballot box but believes public support for environmental causes remains deeply rooted.

“In terms of people’s interest in the environment, I don’t think there is a change,” Coronado said. “People understand that the quality of the environment is an important quality of life issue as well.

“I think people understand that on a fundamental level.”