Good morning.
On behalf of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the committee for inviting us to participate. But particularly, I'd like to thank the honourable member from the Bloc Québécois for the Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine area, Mr. Blais. Thank you.
I would like to frame my comments on the Bennett incinerator project in Belledune in the context of DFO's record in the Baie des Chaleurs, and particularly in Belledune, and the plan DFO has to modernize its habitat management program.
This plan is part of a government-wide initiative called “smart regulations” aimed at streamlining the regulatory system. As you've just heard from Mr. Landry, the fish resources of the Baie des Chaleurs have supported and have sustained hundreds of communities and thousands of people in Quebec and New Brunswick. The Baie des Chaleurs is part of a larger ecosystem, part of the St. Lawrence estuary, the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence ecosystem. It's a relatively deep bay. It's approximately 120 kilometres long and 40 kilometres wide at its maximum width. On average, less than 20 kilometres separate New Brunswick from Quebec, from the Gaspé coast.
A unique feature of the Baie des Chaleurs is a gyre. It's the result of two opposing currents that come into the bay and currents that go out of the bay to create a counter-clockwise current, or a gyre. It's a unique oceanographic feature in the world. There are not many of them around. Where these gyres exist there are areas of high fish productivity. These gyres tend to concentrate nutrients, larvae, plankton, eggs, which in turn attract food and are food for larger commercial species, as you've just heard. The gyre also traps contaminants, and it prevents a significant portion of the contaminants that come into the bay from industrial activity around the bay from leaving and going out into the larger ecosystem.
As a deep-water bay that could accommodate a wide range of shipping activity, the Baie des Chaleurs became not surprisingly an ideal location for industrial development. And nowhere along the shores of the Baie des Chaleurs has that industrial activity been as great as in Belledune in New Brunswick.
For 40 years, Belledune has been the site of a lead smelter, an acid plant, and until recently a fertilizer plant, a gypsum plant. In 1994 a coal-fired power plant was added to this industrial mix in this very tiny village. In 1981 plans were approved for a zinc smelter. It got under way, but the metal prices fell and as a result the project was called to a halt. Now, two years after the fertilizer plant associated with the smelter began operating, DFO scientists reported that due to the effluent at the end of this fertilizer plant's pipe, which is into the bay, a 200-square-metre area of the sea bottom had been basically covered with the waste from the fertilizer plant, which is calcium sulphate or gypsum.
By 1985 the effluent covered 31 hectares. By 1996 the effluent covered 44 hectares and had a volume of a million cubic metres. In some areas the waste gypsum was 12 metres deep. Today the gypsum that covers the sea bottom at the end of the effluent pipe looks like it's been paved with concrete.
In 1980 the lobsters and the mussels in the Belledune area and at least eight kilometres down current from the Belledune area were found to have high levels of cadmium and lead, above Health Canada guidelines. The metals were identified as coming from the lead smelter. There was no question of that. There was a ban on lobster fishing in Belledune harbour and the lagoon was put in place. That ban is still in place, and the lobsters caught in the lagoon and in the harbour area are incinerated.
By 1984 Environment Canada was calling the Belledune area one of the most contaminated areas in Atlantic Canada. In 1988 federal scientists identified high mercury and cadmium levels in the sediments in the area of the gyre I talked about. From 1979 to 2001 the effluent from the smelter failed every single toxicity test under the metal mining effluent regulations under the Fisheries Act. In 1998-99 the Geological Survey of Canada did an assessment of the sediments in the entire Baie des Chaleurs, and the researchers concluded, and I am quoting:
Dispersion of smelter emissions by wind and ocean currents has resulted in an area of elevated metal concentrations in surface sediments that extends at least 20 km from the smelter.
So the marine sediments in the entire Baie des Chaleurs area have been elevated three to four times above background concentrations.
In 2004, 15 years after consultants estimated how many fish and fish larvae—baby fish—would be sucked into the intake pipe of the then-proposed power plant and killed, they finally did a study to estimate how many really are sucked in and killed by the intake. It's a cooling water that comes into the power plant to cool the plant.
As it turns out, their estimates were out by almost 700%. Instead of 8.1 million larvae being sucked in and killed, 54 million baby fish—larvae—are killed on the intake pipe of the power plant annually. Now, this is only an estimate based on five-months' worth of sampling. That number could be much higher. But in addition, they also estimated that 370 million eggs are sucked into the intake plant and 12,000 fish are destroyed.
Just 40 miles up the coast from Belledune is another power plant, and we have no idea how many numbers of fish, larval fish and eggs, are impinged and entrained—those are the technical terms—on the intake pipe of that particular power plant.
In 2005, after the Belledune area health study revealed that seafood consumption, specifically mussels, was one of the main pathways of exposure to metals and a significant contributor to the high cancer and disease rates of local residents in the area, DFO placed a ban on shellfish harvesting near Belledune. This was the first time in 40 years they had placed such a ban in an area because of metal contamination.
I think you will all agree that the failure to protect fish and fish habitat in Belledune and the Baie des Chaleurs by DFO and other agencies has been a stunning failure. How was this allowed to happen when so many federal and provincial agencies had such complete regulatory authority over the industries in Belledune? How could federal and provincial regulators so completely ignore the existing contamination in Belledune and allow a hazardous waste incinerator to be built in the area?
The answer to the first question can be found in a report I sent to every member of the committee. The French translation was sent Tuesday to the clerk, and I hope it's been distributed as well. If you look in chapter 3 and chapter 9 of that document, it specifically talks about the Baie des Chaleurs and the fish resources and fish habitat there. Throughout Belledune's 40-year industrial history, federal and provincial government planners, scientists, and managers reviewed the environmental impact statements for various projects, and they discussed the monitoring results done by industry. They noted the violations of provincial and federal air, water, soil, marine habitat, and food standards and guidelines.
Over those four decades respective ministers of federal and provincial agencies failed to impose sanctions, restrictions, or penalties when these industries were found to be violating air, water, habitat regulation and effluent standards, when leaks and spills occurred and monitoring equipment wasn't working. Throughout the 40-year history of Belledune none of these industries were ever sanctioned, prosecuted, or fined under section 32, section 35, and section 36 of the Fisheries Act. Simply put, the laws were never enforced.
The answer to the second question, how could another potentially polluting industry pass unchallenged by federal regulators, particularly DFO, is equally simple. DFO and government agencies failed to acknowledge the existing destruction and pollution burden in the area, and they had failed to do so for 40 years. They failed to assess the full range of possible environmental risks from the incinerators, specifically emissions from the facility, their potential deposition to the marine environment, and the possible transboundary effects of those emissions.
DFO officials were too preoccupied with applying a very limited interpretation of their mandate: effluent pipes, water courses, and waste water use. To consider pollutants released to the atmosphere and the potential effect on the marine environment was not even on their radar screen. In fact, even before all the questions that DFO officials had about this project were answered, the province had already issued a permit to construct and the building was under way.
Short-range and long-range transport of atmospheric contaminants and their deposition into the marine environment are an acknowledged pathway by which contaminants get into the marine environment. For example, we know that in the Arctic marine food chain the contaminants in those fish and whales and people are a result of atmospheric deposition from sources thousands of kilometres away.
The specific concerns that residents and fishermen have about the Bennett facility was the release of dioxins and furans, the most toxic man-made substance known to humans. Levels measured in quantities as small as 30 parts per trillion have been known to cause developmental effects in embryonic fish. One part per trillion is one grain of salt dissolved in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. These are concentrations of, really, unimaginably small amounts, and it's why people are concerned. The greatest source of dioxins, perhaps the most hazardous types of dioxins, are industrial municipal waste incinerators.
The Bennett facility, which, as you heard, does not have a permit to operate, is licensed to burn hydrocarbons and creosote, and a small amount of these chlorinated hydrocarbons like PCBs. Again, these numbers seem small to you. It's only 33 parts per million PCBs, but over the course of the year this amounts to three tonnes of PCBs. The reason people are concerned and we are concerned is that it is these chlorinated compounds that are the precursor or the necessary ingredient for the formation of dioxins and furans in the incineration process. When you put these soils through the facility, and mix them up with other contaminants at high temperature, you get dioxin formation.
We're being asked to believe that the pollution control devices that are on this facility are sufficient to prevent those dioxins from coming out of the stack. You just have to look at the case in St. Ambroise to understand why we have no faith in those pollution control devices.
So the specific concern about the fishing community and about these dioxins getting into the food chain and putting in jeopardy their fishery is very real. Food safety is becoming an increasingly important issue for consumers, and there are several examples in recent years where governments have reacted swiftly with bans and shutting down operations where products have been found to be contaminated.
For example, in 2004 the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture shut down temporarily 140 farms after cancer-causing dioxins were found in the milk of just two of those farms. The source of the dioxin was a potato byproduct, something that came out of a french fry manufacturing plant. The waste potato peels were then shipped and fed to these animals, and that's how it got into the food chain. So you can see how these things accumulate.
Just last week, CBC--
