In June, the federal and provincial governments announced that they were jointly giving $7 million to Nipigon and $9 million to Red Rock to upgrade their sewage treatment systems.

Though the principle of local contribution towards clean-up costs makes sense in most cases, governments need to make sure that their guidelines have enough flexibility to allow them to drop the local payment component when a community is suffering an economic crisis.

Being in dire economic straits should not mean that a community also has to live with the stress of not being able to clean up its environment and force its residents to continue to endure the health threats that contamination problems pose. In fact, a failure to act on pollution can exacerbate economic problems, discouraging positive population growth and encouraging residents and businesses to leave town.

Debate over who pays, and how, is the most frequently recurring reason that municipal infrastructure upgrades and clean up of contaminated sediments are stalled. These are both critical for the restoration of most Areas of Concern in the Great Lakes. The principle usually used by senior governments – federal, provincial and state – is that local sources must pay a substantial part of the required money.

In Canada, for example, the standard formula is that the federal and provincial governments each pay one-third of the costs of these projects. The other third, they argue, should be paid by the municipality or local polluters. This requirement usually leads to substantial delays, if not total stalls, in the project.

This can become an insurmountable problem in areas suffering severe economic stress, such as Nipigon Bay on the north shore of Lake Superior. Major progress has been made on implementing the Remedial Action Plan, but the outstanding problem is the sewage treatment systems in Nipigon and Red Rock. With this funding Nipigon can finally complete their clean up efforts.

The government has refused to add Port Stanley to the list. All the while, these contaminants wash along the Lake Erie shoreline to a municipal water intake that provides drinking water for 100,000 people, including parts of London.

At least three of the fourteen use impairments used to designate a site an Area of Concern under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement are present in Port Stanley, according to Environment Canada studies. A more detailed investigation of conditions in the harbour could well show other use impairments.

But it is highly unlikely that Port Stanley will be recognized as an Area of Concern. Since the Canadian and U.S. governments named 42 Areas of Concern around the Great Lakes in 1987, only one other area has been added: Presque Isle Bay at Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1991. In the last 18 years no new Areas of Concern have been designated.

In 1998, the International Joint Commission, which oversees the AOC program, said that Lake St. Clair and the St. Joseph River should be considered by the governments for designation as Areas of Concern. The two federal governments decided not to designate them saying that the problems in them could be addressed through other programs.

In 2004, citizens in Elmira, Ontario, urged the government to designate their area as an Area of Concern. They argued that dioxins and other toxics from chemical plants in this town of 12,000 people flow down the Grand River, causing contamination all the way out to Lake Erie. The governments, again, denied the request.

Why do people want to have their area designated as an Area of Concern? The prime reason is that it increases the attention of federal, provincial and state governments in cleaning up the area. It means that a more thorough assessment of the problems in the area will be carried out, and that a clean-up plan will be developed. It also means that the public must be involved in the processes around the clean-up, usually in the form of a public advisory committee. Finally, being designated as an Area of Concern raises the priority given to the area when decisions are being made about which clean-up projects to fund.

The reasons why communities sometimes want to be designated as Areas of Concern are the very reasons why the federal, provincial and state governments are not interested in designating new ones. They do not want to have more locations where they are committed to carrying out the thorough assessments, planning and clean-up that the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement entails. In response to the request from Elmira for designation, Canada’s Minister of the Environment said, “Environment Canada has not considered any further Area of Concern designations and has placed a priority on the environmental recovery and delisting of the existing designated areas.”

An important part of a revitalized Agreement is a meaningful role for the public.

The residents of Port Stanley, Elmira and those concerned about the St.. Clair and St. Joseph rivers have been ignored because officials are under no obligation to listen.

The International Joint Commission and the federal governments should put in place a formal means of petitioning the government to designate a new area of concern. In addition, it could require the governments to periodically conduct a survey to determine whether additional sites should be designated as Areas of Concern.

Despite the many criticisms that are made of the Area of Concern and remedial action planning processes, this program has contributed immensely towards the cleanup of the Great Lakes. Refusing to designate other areas that are toxic hotspots will only slow that cleanup. Indeed it will allow increased contamination of the Great Lakes.

jjackson@glu.org

“Seaway acts to flush Great Lakes invaders”
– Muskegon Chronicle, May 6, 2008

After years of watching new invasive species arrive in the ballast tanks of ocean ships, the St. Lawrence Seaway has finally put in place measures to address ships that arrive in the Great Lakes with “no ballast on board” but still harboring residual water—and invaders—at the bottom of their tanks. In addition to ballasted ships flushing their tanks out in the open sea, these ships are now also required to flush, killing or purging many invaders that may be lurking. While this is not an 100% effective measure, and we must continue to press towards ships meeting national discharge standards, it represents a significant step forward in protecting the Great Lakes.

“IJC abandons gutless plan for dam”
– Great Lakes News, online edition, September 18, 2008

Activists from across the region rallied to prevent the International Joint Commission from implementing a management plan for the Moses-Saunders Dam that would have damaging effects on coastal habitat. “Plan 2007” would maintain the status quo for managing Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River levels. American Rivers has suggested that these management practices have made the St. Lawrence one of America’s most threatened rivers. The IJC is now working on a broader, more inclusive, process for developing a water levels plan that would benefit the environment after suffering 50 years of damage.

“Montreal Selects New Sewage Treatment Technology”

On January 30, 2008, the city of Montreal announced that, after years of study, ozone will be the disinfection technology implemented at its sewage treatment plant. According to the Mayor of Montreal, Gérald Tremblay, it is a big step forward in improving the water quality of the St. Lawrence River and for the benefit of Montrealers and residents downstream.

The ozone technology meets the requirements of Montreal wastewater, in addition to dealing with emerging substances. The Montréal sewage treatment plant treats 2.5 million cubic meters of water daily, about 50 per cent of all wastewater in Quebec. From the perspective of sustainability, this disinfection process takes into account the elimination of viruses and bacteria, emerging new compounds, including pharmaceuticals and surfactants (detergents).

“Congress Passes Great Lakes Legacy Act”
–Targeted News Service, October 1, 2008

Before adjourning for the fall, Congress reauthorized the Great Lakes Legacy Act, providing $54 million per year to clean up toxic pollution across the region. Funding from the legislation is being used to clean up such pollution as contaminated sediments Indiana’s Grand Calumet River (an Area of Concern) and Milwaukee’s Kinnickinnic River.

Congress passes historic Great Lakes protection
– Great Lakes News, online edition, September 23, 2008

After seven years of negotiating the agreements and passing them in the eight Great Lakes states, Ontario, and Quebec, the Great Lakes Compact and its sister international agreement became law this fall. The agreements represent the strongest protections in Great Lakes history against harmful diversions and introduce strict conservation standards for the regions most wasteful water users.

“Minnesota Voters in 2008 Approve $5.5 Billion to Protect Land and Water”
Marketwatch, November 5, 2008

The Clean Water, Wildlife and Cultural Heritage and Natural Area amendment to Minnesota’s constitution was passed on November 4, raising $300 million every year for 25 years. The funds will go toward cleaning up polluted waters and lands, establishing conservation easements, and other projects to ensure a environmental legacy for future Minnesotans.

Until a few years ago, whenever the wind came up around Torch Lake in Michigan’s upper peninsula, copper-contaminated sands would whirl up from around its shores. Local residents describe it as looking like a sandstorm in the desert.

For over one hundred years, the towns of Houghton and Hancock, near the shore of Lake Superior, were the centre of a major copper mining, milling, and smelting industry. The contaminated sands are the byproduct of a stamp mill, which separated copper from rock by pounding the ore. From the mid-1800s to 1968, over 2.5 million tons of copper were processed at Torch Lake.

By 1969, this industry had closed down, leaving the hulking remnants of industrial plants that still remain to this day. But, when the industry closed, they left behind a devastated environment around Torch Lake. 200 million tons of copper mill stamp sands were dumped into the lake, taking up about 20 percent of the lake’s volume. In some areas, the contaminated sediments are believed to be seventy feet deep.

These sediments contain copper at levels up to 2,000 parts per million, as well as other heavy metals. Some of the tailings were dredged up and processed to reclaim the copper, after which the wastes were returned to the lake and the shoreline. This made the tailings finer, smothering the lake like a fine-woven blanket. The finer tailings are also more readily taken up by life on the bottom of the lake. This has severely degraded the bottom-dwelling communities that are essential to the Torch Lake food web.

The main activity to clean up the Torch Lake Area of Concern has been to stop the dust storms that swirl around the lake. The aim here is to stop more tailings from blowing into the lake, further contaminating the lake-bottom. Stopping the sand also reduces the risk to those people who would otherwise be breathing in these toxic particles. Between 1998 and 2005, 800 acres of stamp sands around the shores of Torch Lake were covered with a six-inch layer of soil, and vegetation was planted on top.

The dust storms have now ended, but 200 million tons of heavy-metal-contaminated stamp sands still remain in Torch Lake. The governments have decided to leave these sediments alone to gradually be covered over by natural deposits of soil. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that the costs of taking any other action on the sediments would be extremely high and that contaminant levels are within “safe” levels for human health.

By the governments’ determination, all remedial activities in Torch Lake are completed. The issue is now deciding when Torch Lake can be delisted. The U.S. EPA estimates that it will take decades for enough soil to be deposited to sufficiently cover the contamination, bringing back a healthy benthic community. The state of Michigan and some local residents are pushing for delisting of the Torch Lake within the next couple of years, arguing that this is no longer an area of concern.

In two places, Spanish Harbour in Ontario and Presque Isle Bay (Erie) in Pennsylvania, AOCs have been declared to be in a “recovery stage.” This means that all planned remedial actions have been completed, but that it will take time for the system to naturally recover. Michigan, however, does not accept a recovery stage option. It prefers to instead push for immediate delisting.

The issue at Torch Lake is one that is likely to recur in other areas of concern as the push to delist AOCs continues.

It is critical to continue to call sites in which there still are impaired conditions “areas of concern” until they truly are restored. By saying that they are in a “recovery stage” instead of delisted properly conveys to the governments and the community that conditions are not yet restored and that we must keep a vigilant eye on these areas. Extensive monitoring is necessary to ensure that recovery is actually occurring. It also means being open to additional restoration actions if monitoring indicates that recovery is not happening to the extent or as quickly as predicted.

Mary Gade, Region 5 EPA administrator since fall of 2006, was fired because she was pushing for a quicker cleanup of the dioxin-ravaged water systems flowing into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. This area, which is often compared with Love Canal, New York, and Times Beach, Missouri as one of the worst dioxin-contaminated sites ever found in the U.S., was designated by the U.S. and Canadian governments as an Area of Concern under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

Midland, Michigan is world headquarters for Dow Chemical, which for decades released a chemical soup, including dioxins, into the local waterways. This has resulted in dioxin-saturated sediments that stretch 50 miles beyond its Midland plant through the Tittabawassee River system and down the Saginaw River into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron.

For decades Dow Chemical has fought to limit its clean-up responsibilities. It has claimed that dioxins don’t have negative health effects beyond a skin disease called chloracne, and that the sources of dioxins are forest fires and wood-burning fireplaces, not its chemical plant.

Last summer Mary Gade ordered Dow Chemical to remove three hotspots of dioxins in Midland. In November, she demanded more dredging when they found that sediments along a park had dioxin levels of 1.6 million parts per trillion. This, the highest level of dioxins ever found in the U.S., exceeded clean-up standards by millions of times. The U.S. clean-up standard is 5,900 parts per trillion; Michigan State’s level is 90 parts per trillion. Dow Chemical tried to cut a deal on the cleanup that she was requiring.

When Mary Gade persisted in her call for the immediate removal of the sediments, Dow Chemical appealed to officials in Washington, D.C. to intervene on their behalf. This resulted in two aides to the EPA head telling her to quit or be fired by June 1. She immediately resigned.

Environmental groups in Michigan, including Environmental Health Watch in Midland, Michigan Citizens Against Toxic Chemicals, Lone Tree Council, and Ecology Center in Ann Arbor, have fought for decades for the cleanup. They have long expressed frustration and anger with Dow’s on-going intimidation and political string-pulling, which have stalled the cleanup. In the meantime, people and wildlife are exposed to dioxins, and contaminated sediments flow down the river system out to Lake Huron.

Commissioner Ron Thompson gives the federal government poor marks in many areas, several directly affecting the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River.

“Progress in nine areas is unsatisfactory largely because the government did not follow through on its own commitments to strengthen protection of the environment,” Thompson stated during a press conference in Ottawa.

Of the topics of most direct import to the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River, the Commissioner concluded that progress had been “unsatisfactory” on protection of species at risk, control of aquatic invasive species, and restoration of the most heavily polluted areas in the Great Lakes. He concluded that progress had been “satisfactory” on chemicals management.
The main recurring themes around the failure of the Federal government were: a failure to conduct adequate environmental assessments when developing policies and programs; a lack of commitment at the senior levels of government; and lack of resources dedicated to environmental protection.

Protection of Species at Risk

Progress here was determined to be unsatisfactory because of the federal government’s failure to develop a comprehensive inventory of species at risk, failure to complete recovery strategies for species at risk (only 55 of the necessary 228 plans were completed), and failure to identify critical habitat.

Control of Aquatic Invasive Species

The Commissioner found that the federal government’s progress was “unsatisfactory” on this threat, which can “fundamentally change the environment they occupy and, by extension, affect its economic value in terms of beneficial uses.” He found that the rate at which new alien species are becoming established in Canada exceeds the rate at which the Department is assessing risks, that Fisheries and Oceans Canada does not have mechanisms in place for early detection and rapid response to new invasive species, and failure to monitor and report on compliance with federal legislation on ballast water.

Areas of Concern in Great Lakes Basin

The Commissioner also found that progress was “unsatisfactory” in cleaning up these toxic hotspots. The main problems identified by the Commissioner were: failure to clarify who is responsible for carrying out and paying for each remedial action and failure to set timelines for remedial actions. He identified two high-cost types of problems as of greatest concern in the government’s failure to make progress: contaminated sediments, and overloaded municipal wastewater systems.

Chemicals Management

The Commissioner found progress on chemical management to be “satisfactory” primarily because of progress in conducting risk assessments under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Resources in Environment Canada and Health Canada were adjusted to assist in review of 4,300 substances.

Components to upgrade Nipigon’s sewage treatment plant site unused
because a serious economic downturn has left the community unable
to pay for the installation. Photo credit: John Jackson.

Behind a high chain link fence lie three rows of hulking circular black metal equipment. These components are meant to upgrade the sewage treatment plant in Nipigon, Ontario, but instead they lie unused while Nipigon’s sewage system continues to dump hundreds of thousands of litres of poorly treated water into the bay each year.

Nipigon Bay, which is bordered by Nipigon and Red Rock on the north shore of Lake Superior, is the most northerly of the Areas of Concern designated under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Over the past twenty years, major progress has been made by the federal, provincial, and municipal governments, industry and the active members of the local communities in restoring the environment in the area. These actions have included log and debris removal from spawning areas, fish stocking, restoration of a brook trout stream, and upgrades to the Norampac mill in Red River. Perhaps most significantly, the community was able to persuade Ontario Power Generation to change the operation of their hydroelectric dams in the area to ensure maintenance of a flow adequate for fish needs.

But despite these successes, the Nipigon sewage treatment plant still provides only primary treatment of human wastes. This means that only the solids are removed before the wastes flow into Nipigon Bay, instead of treating the wastes to remove many of the contaminants, such as phosphorus and nitrogen, before discharge to the water.

Those three rows of equipment in the field in Nipigon are supposed to be used to upgrade that sewage treatment plant. The Federal-Provincial Infrastructure Program has put money in, but the municipality does not have the 2-3 million additional dollars needed to complete the job.

Nipigon and Red Rock are experiencing devastating economic conditions. In late 2006, Norampac closed its linerboard plant in Red Rock, laying off 300 workers.

Across the bay in Nipigon, things appeared more promising when at the end of that year local investors and workers saved a plywood mill from being closed down after Columbia Forest Products announced their intention to sell or close down the mill. But the celebration was short lived; a month later, the plywood mill went up in flames, burning to the ground. The result another 120 job lost. In total, 420 jobs disappeared in a community of approximately 3,700.

Today, the two towns are piercing examples of the economic fragility of so many northern Ontario communities that are based on undiversified economies. These economic conditions mean that the municipality of Nipigon has a very limited tax base. It is, therefore, impossible for them to come up with the money to stop discharging human waste into Nipigon Bay after only primary treatment. The Canadian and Ontario governments should step in and provide the extra 2-3 million dollars to help complete restoration activities in this Area of Concern.

In early February, the Center for Public Integrity released a government report on public health conditions and exposure to toxics in the U.S. toxic hotspots. This report had been blocked from release for seven months because, according to the Center for Public Integrity, the U.S. government thought it was “too hot for the public to handle.” Almost ten years earlier similar reports were hidden from the Canadian public for eleven months for similar reasons.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) report found that there were “over 15,000 instances where contaminants of concern were found at levels above health-screening values in a variety of media (i.e., water, air, and soil).”

The report concludes, “While no causal inferences or associations are made in this report, of the 26 AOCs [Areas of Concern], elevated rates were observed for infant mortality in 21 AOCs, low birth weight in 6 AOCs, and premature births in 4 AOCs. Elevated cancer mortality was also seen for breast cancer in 17 AOCs, colon cancer in 16 AOCs, and lung cancer in 12 AOCs.”

The report also found that over nine million people live in the AOC areas where these toxic releases are occurring. They estimated that almost a quarter million “vulnerable populations” live within one mile of hazardous waste sites in these communities. ATSDR defines children less than six years old, reproductive-age women, and older adults as the vulnerable.

Upon the request of the International Joint Commission in 2001, the ATSDR put together this report on the public health implications of hazardous substances found in the twenty-six AOCs on the U.S. side of the Great Lakes. For each of these AOCs, the ATSDR gathered data on public health assessments for hazardous waste sites, on releases of hazardous materials as reported in the Toxics Release Inventory and as allowed under discharge permits, and on health incidences as reported by county health departments.

This data was summarized in a 400-page report entitled Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern. After extensive review by outside experts, the report was scheduled for release in July 2007, but at the last minute the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention withheld the report. Dr. Christopher De Rosa, then director of the agency’s toxicology and environmental health division, pressed for the immediate release of the report stating that the delay would give “the appearance of censorship of science and distribution of factual information regarding the health status of vulnerable communities.” Dr. De Rosa has subsequently been demoted. Seven months later the Center for Public Integrity managed to obtain a copy of the report and released it.

Déjà Vu

Almost ten years ago a similar burying of public health information in toxic hotspots occurred on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes. Health Canada’s Great Lakes Health Effects Program prepared an analysis of health statistics for each of the Canadian AOCs that “may be linked to exposure to environmental contaminants.” This statement was in the introduction of the report for each of the seventeen AOCs. While not directly making a cause and effect link, each report stated what kinds of chemicals are known to result in each kind of health problem. For example, in seven of the Ontario AOCs, they found early labour or threatened pregnancy. They noted that this may be affected by PCBs and DDT body burden.

The Health Canada reports were all printed and ready for release by November 1998. The government, however, withheld them and they weren’t released until almost a year later in October 1999. This was only because the government was forced to after community activists gained access to them and gave them to a news reporter. The Health Canada release was brief, however, and they were quickly removed from their website and buried again. Shortly thereafter, Health Canada closed down its ground-breaking Great Lakes Health Effects Program.

The human health aspect in Great Lakes toxic hotspots has always been a controversial aspect of the remedial action planning process, which is usually dealt with by simply not acknowledging it. It is important, however, that, despite the difficulty of making direct cause-effect linkages, the public be given access to data such as that in the U.S. and Canadian studies. The fear that it will create unreasonable responses by the public is an insult to those who are working so hard to clean up and protect their communities. Instead they should be given as much information as possible so they can make informed decisions about what further explorations and clean-up actions are needed.