NORTHSTAR/BISHOP ST. DISASTER CONTINUES

The Ontario Ministry of the Environment (M.O.E.) have been very busy of late doing what they do best, which is after the fact paperwork. They have issued three Director's Orders last year dated on March 15/12, May31/12, and November14/12. Further to that they also issued an Instrument Exception Notice dated December 14, 2012. As I understand this last Notice is simply to advise that they didn't give timely notice to the public or allow for public participation due to the imminent danger to the public if the ongoing remediation of the Bishop St. area in Cambridge was interrupted. These concerns appear legitimate as afterall Northstar Aerospace declared bankruptcy last August.

What an unmitigated disaster from start to finish. I predict that the time will come when the media, both local and provincial/national, will awaken from their snooze. Then they will suddenly discover the extent of environmental and human damage done by a corporate manufacturer sucessfully being shielded from the public by our very own provincial Ministry of the Environment. I have this morning posed the question to some friends in Cambridge as to whether it was common knowledge that Northstar had a horrific spill (34,000 litres) in 1995 as indicated in the November 14/12 Director's Order. The claim is that the spill was cyanide effluent along with chromic acid. This would explain the issue of hexavalent chromium but not the TCE directly. That being said it's been my experience that polluters never have one single spill of one single chemical. Usually there are multiple spills with mixtures of chemicals involved. As the M.O.E. were notified of this environmental disaster in 1995 they should have been all over that company by installing monitoring wells and testing groundwater immediately. That could well have gotten people either out of their homes a decade sooner or gotten the indoor air remediation installed a decade sooner.

If heads are going to roll over two deaths from a mall collapse in Elliot Lake then why shouldn't there be formal inquiries into the Bishop St. disaster which included deaths and hundreds of health impairments?