Out of sight, Out of Mind, Out of Time

BYLINE Paul Schneiderheit

The Halifax Chronicle-Herald, Friday March 5, 1999

HYPOTHETICAL situation: Imagine residents of Toronto were dying of cancer, at rates significantly higher than the rest of Ontario.

No scientific proof existed, but common sense indicated a large part of the blame lay with a huge industrial complex - right in the heart of the city - that had spewed cancer-causing chemicals into the air for decades. That industry had closed years ago, but a massive toxic waste site - four times larger than the infamous Love Canal site in New York where an entire community was evacuated in the '70s - was left behind. Black and yellow goo, laced with dozens of known carcinogens, oozed to the surface with disturbing regularity.

Now, imagine people's homes bordered that mess and those people were getting sick.

We know what would happen.

The outcry would reverberate across the country. Politicians in both Queen's Park and the House of Commons would be predictably fiery, demanding accountability and action. Governments, no doubt, would hasten to find - and to be seen as finding - a rapid solution to what would rightly be termed a national environmental disaster.

Now place that scenario in Sydney, on the edge rather than in the centre of the Canadian universe.

The reaction has been different, to put it mildly.

For 2 1/2 years, the so-far misnamed Joint Action Group, a large, ponderous body made up of interested citizens and representatives from three levels of government, has been attempting to tackle a massive cleanup job that will take years and likely cost billions.

As anyone who's attended meetings knows, the more people involved, the slower things happen.

JAG has layers of committees, working groups which funnel motions to a round table, which sends recommendations to yet another body representing participating governments.

The result has been that approval for even the most obvious projects can take months.

Hundreds of hours have been spent discussing conflict-of-interest rules, ethics guidelines and governance policy - topics obviously important to have in place, but the unavoidable result has been more delay on the actual cleanup.

No wonder they've been constantly criticized for inaction.

JAG and government officials are fond of saying the process is "an experiment."

Somehow, I don't think governments would be "experimenting" in Toronto.

JAG's mandate doesn't even cover former tar ponds that were infilled and built over by malls and other businesses.

JAG is inching forward, but many devoted volunteers are burning out, frustrated by endless discussions about "process" and convinced governments are more interested in stalling - while looking good - than in actually spending money on the problem.

Government members Don Ferguson, Health Canada's director general for the Atlantic region, denies this and challenges critics to prove the charge.

He's got a point. Why not bring all these simmering grievances to the surface, perhaps in a special meeting? Deal with it.

Last week, many JAG members were sure they had finally taken action, passing a motion demanding residents of Frederick Street, which faces the former coke ovens site, be relocated by June 1. Newspaper reports indicated JAG had asked governments to implement a separation zone to identify which residents and businesses would have to be relocated in preparation for cleanup work at a future date.

But the actual wording of the motion states governments must only " fund and initiate ... a process to develop and evaluate criteria information necessary to define and implement an appropriate separation zone."

No wonder senior government officials not at the meeting wanted clarification.

Frederick Street residents will not be moved anywhere by June 1.

Like it or not, JAG's glacial pace - despite the good intentions of many on board - is simply not good enough.

JAG should either step up the pace or be pared down to a workable size. Going on three years is long enough. People want to see results.

Email: pauls@herald.ns.ca

Report flawed on asbestos - worker

By Tera Camus / Cape Breton Bureau-Halifax Herald, March 5, 1999
Sydney - A former worker at PLI Environmental says a Labour Department report this week put a new spin on regulations to dismiss the dangers of exposure to asbestos.

Donnie Gauthier, a burner on the now-defunct $7.7-million cleanup project at Sydney Steel, said the asbestos blowing around workers on the site last year was like a snowstorm at times.

"There was 3,500 metric tonnes of asbestos in No. 1, 2 and 4 stoves so how could anyone in their right mind interpret (it's not a hazard)?" he asked.

"It completely contravenes the Nova Scotia Environment Act."

Sydney Steel's old blast furnace stoves were among the structures that were demolished on-site last year. PLI Environmental received an untendered government contract in August 1997 to remove most of the dilapidated structures at the north end of the steel plant.

The project was supposed to give laid-off steelworkers two years of work, but it ended last September when the company said it had run out of money.

A Labour Department probe began after a dozen laid-off employees at PLI came forward with safety concerns and 124 photos of alleged irregularities.

The Labour Department report released Wednesday determined PLI failed to maintain a good health and safety record.

It also said the asbestos found among the brick in three blast furnace stoves was not a hazard.

"The waste from the stoves would not be classified as hazardous since the weight of asbestos was less than one per cent of the total weight of the stoves," the report said.

Despite that finding, the provincial Environment Department ordered the company last year to bury the debris in an "approved asbestos waste storage facility."

Asbestos waste, according to the Environment Act, means a friable waste material containing asbestos fibre or asbestos dust in a concentration greater than one per cent by weight.

A friable waste material is a material that can be reduced to powder by hand pressure, it said.

The act also states: "No person who handles asbestos waste shall permit asbestos fibres or asbestos dust to become airborne."

Jim LeBlanc, the Labour Department's executive director of occupational health and safety, said there's a reason for the discrepancy.

"Basically we're talking about two different sets of standards," he said.

"Our standard is the risk of exposure to asbestos fibre so it doesn't really matter how much asbestos is in the waste," he said.

Yet the Labour report said "it is likely that the salvage operation released residual asbestos fibres but it is not possible to conclude that concentrations would have exceeded regulatory standards."

Examples in the report where workers were exposed to asbestos:

The facts suggest "but do not conclude" that electrical panels may have contained asbestos and there may have been inappropriate procedures used to salvage copper from these panels;

When asbestos workers wore their protective gear in the lunchrooms, it was "brought to the attention of the site safety officer and the practice ... stopped in January 1998." The acceptable standard is to leave all personal protective equipment in a controlled work area.

Workers continuously entered a laydown area where asbestos-insulated pipe was stored before burial. "Supervision was lacking to control these occurrences."

Workers stayed after hours to witness the demolition of the blast furnace stoves. "This practice would have created an opportunity for exposure."

Evidence also suggests with stoves 1, 2 and 4 "that the probability of a release of friable asbestos during the falling of these stoves was very low." There was no air monitoring on the site.

Excavator and dozer work to bury the asbestos-laced brick from the stoves was delayed "until nature provided snow or rain to wet the ground."

Workers lacked instruction on how to ensure complete decontamination.

Although workers wore the wrong type of masks for months, the report said "with the use of respirators it is unlikely that exposures would have exceeded legislated exposure standards."

Mr. Gauthier said the bottom line is that workers weren't protected.

"It's not a question of blaming the company. ... Maybe it was ignorance. Maybe we didn't know any better," he said.

"There was no baseline air-monitoring. ... They didn't do the wetting procedures on the asbestos," he said.

The Labour report said PLI did not have a plan to identify asbestos on the project and that abatement methods were not appropriate.

It did not issue any corrective measures because the project ended.
Building site CONTAMINATED
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