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.

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.