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CANADA - WORLD'S TOXIC WASTE DUMP?
PV Environment Column by Bill Morris
(This article is from the April 16-30/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
DAYS BEFORE THE Canadian Environmental Protection Act came into effect on March 31, news broke that 150 tonnes of U.S. military waste containing toxic PCBs had left Japan, destined for a facility in Ontario.
Fortunately the Port of Vancouver, under pressure from unions and citizens groups, has refused to accept the shipment. Until the Port denied access it was not clear that the federal government would act. Federal Environment Minister David Anderson had said that if the shipment exceeds Canada's PCB level threshold of 50 parts per million "we'd send it back to Japan, or, which is probably more likely as this is coming from an American military base, the ship would be diverted."
By April 6, the ship was diverted to Seattle, where the Longshore Workers refused to handle the shipment. U.S. defence officials admitted they lacked permission from the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard. On April 10, after unloading other cargo in Vancouver, the ship returned to Japan.
Greenpeace's Dr. Darryl Luscombe feels that "Canada should not accept responsibility for the disposal of PCB waste from the U.S. military. We should not be importing the US Department of Defense's toxic waste problems."
This shipment was to be the first wave of offshore U.S military wastes sent to Trans-Cycle Industries (TCI) in Kirkland Lake, Ontario.
However, TCI lacks a permit to import PCB-contaminated waste. Ontario's Ministry of the Environment and Energy rejected TCI's application to import PCBs, fearing that it "could result in a hazard to the health or safety of the public," and was "not in the public interest."
A subsidiary of an Alabama-based waste disposal company, TCI set up Ontario operations with a $1.25 million HRDC Jobs Transition Fund grant. The Ontario plant allows the parent company to avoid stricter U.S. regulations regarding the destruction or disposal of PCBs. The system used by TCI does not destroy PCBs, but extracts them and then ships the concentrated PCBs to Swan Hills, Alberta, for incineration. Swan Hills is the site of a protracted dispute involving a First Nations band and local residents opposed to the incinerator.
"It's a ludicrous situation," said Dr. Luscombe. "A U.S. operation sets up in Ontario to import U.S. military PCB waste into Canada - with no lawful right to do so."
TCI claims the PCB levels are less than 50 parts per million and therefore exempt. But Greenpeace has obtained documents from the U.S. Defence Department indicating that figures used are not based on testing, but on the "labels and user knowledge."
Under the Basel Convention, the international treaty governing the shipping of hazardous wastes, there is only an obligation to obtain prior informed consent from a country receiving PCBs when the levels in the waste exceed 50 part per million. However, there are no exemptions for dioxins and furans, almost always found as contaminants in PCB waste.
Mick Panesar of the Communist Party's Environment Commission fears that Canada is taking the first steps towards becoming a dumping ground for U.S. toxic waste. "After the wars in the Gulf and against Yugoslavia, it is obvious that our government will simply roll over and accept anything the U.S. government tells them to" said Panesar.
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