The Dominion - pollution

Pinkwashing, Incorporated

Moira Peters — Wed, 30 May 2012 10:34:08 +0000

NFB film delves into depoliticization of breast cancer epidemic

LONDON—I remember the first time it really hit me. It was at the third World Conference on Breast Cancer held in Victoria, BC, in 2002. I walked out onto the balcony overlooking the exhibition hall and there it was, a sea of pink.

This conference wasn’t like the first World Conference on Breast Cancer in Kingston, Ontario in 1997. In Kingston, it was all about environmental and occupational causes of breast cancer, primary prevention and cutting edge science.

The speakers were iconic in their work on prevention, and the conference was attended by campaigners whose names were recognizable from the radical campaign material we in the UK eagerly received from Canada and the US.

The Kingston conference was initiated by Janet Collins, who features in the film Pink Ribbons, Inc., produced by Ravida Din and directed by Lea Pool for the National Film Board of Canada (2011).

“The whole pink ribbon culture drain[ed] and deflect[ed] the kind of militancy we had as women who were appalled to have a disease that is epidemic and yet that we don’t even know the cause of,” said Barbara Ehrenreich, author and activist, who is featured in the film.

“We found sisterhood from other women and [from] looking critically at what was going on with our health care," she said. "I mean, what a change; we used to march in the streets, now you’re supposed to run for a cure or walk for a cure...”

At the third world conference in Victoria, with its pharmaceutical funding sources, many of the previous speakers from the scientific community weren’t invited, and many campaigners stayed away.

Nevertheless, those of us committed to prevention and environmental exposure met together and drafted a resolution.

The resolution urged governments to ban proven and suspected carcinogens, and to take a precautionary approach to those chemicals and substances implicated in breast cancer causation. This would entail that even in the absence of scientific consensus, exposure should be eliminated until proof of no harm can be determined and agreed.

In other words, better safe than sorry.

Although initially hesitant, conference organizers used the resolution as a basis for the conference press release. But we were branded. It was the last time I was invited to speak at the World Conference on Breast Cancer, and I was dropped with no explanation from the international advisory group. I felt like a troublemaker.

But at least I was in good company.

On that balcony, looking at the festival of pink, I first imagined pink ribbons used like blindfolds to prevent women from seeing the harsh realities of the disease, and like gags to silence dissent about the the lack of acknowledgement that exposures in our homes, workplaces and in the wider environment could contribute to our breast cancers. But as Judy Brady, author and activist, points out in the film, “If it were a conspiracy then we could expose it and people would be aware; but it’s not, it’s business as usual”.

In less than a decade, women seem to have gone from challenging organizations like the Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition and the Women’s Community Cancer project, first shown in the film marching with banners reading "Draw The Line At 1 In 8," then as women running in pink feather boas and wearing t-shirts with pharmaceutical company logos on the back, embodying that infamous slogan: running for the cure, sponsored by the cause.

What the hell happened?

Samantha King, author of the book Pink Ribbons, Inc., suggests that the big players in the cancer establishment have boards of directors with representatives from the pharmaceutical, chemical and energy industries. It is thus almost impossible to separate the people who might be responsible for the perpetuation of this disease from those who are responsible for trying to find a way to cure or, even better, to prevent it.

It is obvious, then, that emotions like anger, dissent or disbelief and questions about exposures at work, home or in the wider environment don’t sit well with this festival of pink.

We could say that the pink ribbon industry has identified its audience well: the premise being that breast cancer only affects middle-class ultra-feminine white women, because this is the demographic industry wants to sell pink products to.

While millions of dollars have been spent studying the same populations—white, largely middle-class women—this research does not translate to the many African, Asian, African American and racially diverse women contracting the disease. We know their outcomes aren’t as good as those of their white counterparts. Yet so little is spent finding out why.

Is it because they are not the "right" demographic the pink ribbon industry wants to reach out to?

Along with the socio-economic considerations around breast cancer, the racial, cultural, environmental and occupational inequalities are at best not addressed; at worst, neglected, unfunded and largely ignored.

In the film, King reflects: “It wasn’t until Reagan came to power that we saw explicit policies designed to shift responsibility for health and welfare from the government towards private entities, philanthropic organizations, along with the encouragement specifically for corporations to participate in that.”

Or as Reagan himself said, “A buck for business if it helps to solve our social ills.”

The term pinkwashing is used to describe companies associating with a cause that people care about in order to increase their sales and to market pink products. Breast cancer is the poster child of cause marketing.

The irony is that many of the products sold, specifically cosmetics, perfumes, plastics and petrochemical-based products, contain ingredients linked to breast cancer.

“It is hypocrisy to use carcinogens in products and at the same time be advocating for a cure in another way,” says Jane Houlihan from the Environmental Working Group, speaking in the film.

When looked at skeptically, research requires investment and the end product has to be profitable and marketable. There is no profit in prevention or removing carcinogens from the environment, home or workplace.

One of the women attending the Plastics Automotive Industry focus group in Windsor, Ontario, led by Dr. Jim Brophy and Dr. Margaret Keith, said it was the first time she had ever heard that ingredients in plastics are mimicking the female hormone estrogen. She felt that this message needed to be publicly articulated, loud and clear.

Despite all the information out there on Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs), that information is still not reaching those who need it most. Women who have been working in the plastics industry for decades were given no health and safety training and no safety data sheets.

“The evidence is overwhelming on the impact environmental and occupational exposures have on this disease,” says Brophy. “Very little of the resources are going to looking at pesticides, combustion products, plastics, petrochemicals and solvents, many of the things that millions of women are being exposed to every day, either in the general ambient environment or their workplaces.”

And yet “women die from breast cancer just because they are women,” Dr. Olufunmilayoi Olopade reminds the film’s viewers.

While Pink Ribbons, Inc. doesn’t seek to undermine those who gain hope, strength and a sense of community from pink ribbon fundraising, it does ask critical questions about the industry and the pink ribbon brand.

Helen Lynn has campaigned on cancer prevention since 1995 with Putting Breast Cancer on the Map and the No More Breast Cancer campaign. She is currently a freelance campaigner and facilitates the Alliance for Cancer Prevention in the UK. This review was originally published on Alliance for Cancer Prevention's website.

What can you do?

•Go and see the film.

•If you raise pink ribbon money, follow the money and ask questions about how it is spent.

•Follow the example of the Toxic Links Coalition in San Francisco, which each year in October organizes a toxic tour and visits the branches of the worst polluters in their financial district.

•Organize a workplace group to examine what you are exposed to at work.

•Pay attention to what is in the products you buy—to check out cosmetics ingredients visit Skin Deep, a project of the Environmental Working Group.

•Don’t accept the blame. If 50 per cent of breast cancer cases have no known cause then it ain’t your fault.

•Read the book Pink Ribbons, Inc. by Samantha King.

•Check out the Tools for Action on Pink Ribbon Blues Blog.

•Remember: we can’t shop our way out of this epidemic.

The Big See

Pulp Dreams

hillarybain — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 05:24:19 +0000

Pictou Mill is Asia Pulp Paper's latest acquisition

HALIFAX—If you thought that the Canadian pulp and paper industry was environmentally irresponsible, you were right. But the new players on the clear-cut block make them look like a bunch of patchouli-scented tree-huggers. This is the story of how Canada hopped into bed with one of Asia's worst environmental criminals, and how for the Pictou Landing Indian Band in Nova Scotia, it's just one more proverbial slap in the face.

Amidst a lack of fanfare from mainstream Canadian media, and encouragement by the federal government, a company known as Paper Excellence Canada Holdings Corporation has lately been buying up Canadian pulp mills at a rapid rate. Paper Excellence is a shell company of global pulp and paper giant Asia Pulp Paper (APP), itself the logging and pulping arm of the massive Indonesian conglomerate, known as Sinar Mas.

In 2001, APP defaulted on $12 billion in bonds, kicking the Indonesian economy, and indeed the entire Southeast Asian economy, into a downward spiral. Three independent audits have never been able to account for between three and four billion dollars, in part because APP simply re-financed itself through the financial arm of Sinar Mas. APP has illegally logged a national park in Cambodia, and makes a regular practice of creating shell companies, illegally logging, and by the time the underpaid forestry authorities figure out who's responsible...POOF! They're gone.

Richard Brooks, Forests Campaign Coordinator for Greenpeace, has spearheaded a global campaign to boycott APP products. Large-scale paper distributors, such as Xerox, Staples, and Target, have heeded Brooks' message, and now refuse to carry APP products. In an interview with The Dominion, Brooks says:

(APP) is on this mission to grow themselves into the largest paper company in the world...They're involved with illegal logging and deforestation in Indonesia, and quite a bit of their pulp and paper production is in Indonesia...These are old-growth, tropical, rainforests that are being cut down, and turned into acacia plantations and eucalyptus plantations, or are being turned into palm oil plantations, which is another division of their company.

Brooks continues:

You've got endangered species habitat that's being wiped out...orangutans, Sumatran tigers, rhinos...a lot of logging that happens outside of their legal concessions. There's evidence of them logging in protected areas...Huge amount of conflict with local communities which they are disenfranchising...basically going in, logging the hell out of the forest, putting in these (palm oil) plantations, and not asking for any approval from local communities.

If Paper Excellence/APP/Sinar Mas get their hands on the Northern Pulp-owned mill in Pictou, Nova Scotia, and all signs point to the deal being finalized shortly, it will be their fifth Canadian pulp mill acquisition in as many years. The other mills are located in Howe Sound, British Columbia, MacKenzie, British Columbia, Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, and Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

The Canadian pulp mills in question haven't seen this much attention in years. The mill in Pictou has been surviving on a steady diet of government loans for almost a generation. The Prince Albert mill was mothballed at the time of sale. But China is entering a phase of consumerism known as the "paper-culture," and suddenly pulp is again a very hot global commodity. APP simply can't keep up with the Chinese demand for toilet paper, so it has come calling for the mills, and, more importantly, Canada's forests.

We should note that Paper Excellence is not buying any Canadian paper-making facilities. Brooks interprets this to mean that we are in fact witnessing the death of the Canadian, if not North American, paper-making industry, as Canadian pulp will now travel back to Asia, get mixed up with Indonesian hardwood pulp, be made into paper, and then travel back to Canada.

Ed Roste, Vice President of Operations for Paper Excellence, and former VP at Meadow Lake, Paper Excellence's first Canadian pulp mill acquisition in 2006, claims, in an email interview, that while the majority of Canadian pulp will in fact be shipped to China to make paper, there is still a significant North American client base for Canadian pulp. Roste speaks of the “excitement” of the new market opportunities.

The Harper government has opened the public coffers to pay for upgrades to mills all across the country. Canadian taxpayers are on the hook for the 'Pulp and Paper Green Transformation Program' (PPGTP), in which Canadian mills can access up to $1 billion in grants. If Canadian pulp and paper mills were nationalized, such a program might make economic sense for Canadians. As it is taxpayers are to pay for "greening" the mills, only to have many of them sold off to foreign investors, like Sinar Mas, with problematic environmental and financial histories. Paper Excellence's Howe Sound mill received more than $45 million, and the Meadow Lake mill received $2.6 million.

Not to be outdone, in January of 2011, two months prior to the sale being made public, Peter MacKay, Canadian Minister of National Defense, whose family handily owns sizable woodlot holdings in the Pictou area, announced that the Pictou mill would be receiving $28 million under the federal grant. In a telephone interview, Don Breen, Vice-President of Strategic Planning and Government Affairs at Northern Pulp, noted that the $28 million would be used to “reduce odour at the mill by up to 70 per cent, improve boiler performance, and invest in renewable energy initiatives.”

In Nova Scotia, the Pictou mill isn't just a taxpayer-subsidized employer to 230 mill workers, it's the home of a very dirty secret.

Opened in 1966, it is infamous for its continued use of once-idyllic Boat Harbour, a natural lagoon that is located on Pictou Landing Indian Band reserve lands, as an effluent dumping grounds. As documented by the King's College Investigative Journalist Team in 2009, an estimated 1,000,000,000,000 litres of liquid pulp mill waste has poured into Boat Harbour since then, causing untold environmental destruction.

Indeed, an indemnity agreement was signed in 1995 between Scott Maritimes, original owners of the mill, and the provincial government. The agreement guarantees that the Nova Scotia government (actually, Nova Scotia taxpayers) will swallow the costs of cleaning up Boat Harbour. The agreement is valid in transfers of mill ownership. The current NDP provincial government has no alternative plan on what to do with the mill waste, and the Pictou Landing Band is currently in a two-year-and-counting legal battle with the province to see Boat Harbour closed.

Boat Harbour is now a foul-smelling, foam-encrusted, 142-acre wasteland, largely devoid of life. Don Breen, one of the witnesses to the 1995 indemnity, makes no mention of any of the $28 million going to clean up the Boat Harbour disaster that he personally has helped whoever owns the Pictou mill wash their hands of.

In an interview with The Dominion, Kevin Christmas, Indigenous Mi'gmaw, band advisor to Pictou Landing and long-time activist against the pollution of Boat Harbour, notes that effluent-capture technology has existed for years, and that the dire straits of the Pictou Landing Band could have been avoided from the start.

“Boat Harbour is at the tail end of a beautiful reserve called Canada.” says Christmas. “What happens there is one hundred and ten million gallons of the worst possible effluent is being dumped every day, for the last fifty years, in the middle of this beautiful reserve...It's destroying and killing the people. The children...[they] don't know what's wrong with them. But they are not going to live very long lives, and probably will never have children because of base-metal contamination. It's the end of the generation at Pictou Landing.”

Charlie Parker, Minister of the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources, whose riding is located in Pictou West, site of the mill, unveiled the province's 'Renewable Electricity Plan' (REP) in 2010. The REP considers biomass burning, which can involve large-scale, whole-tree harvesting, to be a renewable source of energy.

The repercussions of this definition of 'renewable' have already been felt in Northern Pulp-owned land. In the summer of 2009, Northern Pulp made national headlines in Canada by decimating a wide swath of land in the Musquodoboit-Sheet Harbour area through whole-tree harvesting. Katy Didkowsky, of the Save the Caribou Committee, and a local tourism operator, called the scene a “purposeful massacre.”

Musquodoboit-Sheet Harbour may only be the start. Frank Magazine (Issue 611) recently reported that over 28,000 parcels of land in Nova Scotia, almost 250,000 acres, are without an original Crown grant. The archaic, neo-colonial law in Nova Scotia states that without an original grant, which may be over 300 years old, the land belongs to, and can revert back to, the Crown. Nova Scotia has one of the lowest percentages of Crown land available. That the provincial government has found this new source of potentially exploitable land is perhaps more than convenient.

In this light, it is no great stretch of imagination to interpret the $28 million grant for odour reduction, improved boiler performance, and "green" energy capture as simply implying that emissions from the mill will smell better, while processing more trees, potentially whole trees, and burning more wood as biomass. Anonymous sources in Pictou confirm the mill's preparedness for increased production, and note that boilers “which have not been active for years” are now operational.

The Pictou Chamber of Commerce has come out in favour of the mill's sale. The Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) has also endorsed the sale of the mill in Pictou, as it has done for the other four Paper Excellence acquisitions. Representatives from the CEP were unavailable for comment on whether they knew, or cared, who the actual new owners of the mill were.

The NDP government of Nova Scotia went so far as to engage in a public meet-and-greet with Paper Excellence's VP Ed Roste, and fully endorsed the sale. When Richard Brooks questioned whether the government knew of the links to APP and Sinar Mas, the province pleaded ignorance.

All groups were shamefully mum on addressing the decades-overdue clean-up of Boat Harbour.

For the rest of Nova Scotia, and Canada, it remains to be seen whether we will see the forest for the trees.

Miles Howe is a journalist in Halifax. This article was originally published by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Pictou Mill

The Plastic Bag Debate

Tim McSorley — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 05:34:14 +0000

Lessons from Rwanda

KIGALI, RWANDA—One of the first things you will likely notice if you have the chance to visit Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, is the extraordinary cleanliness that spans the city. This pleasant reality can be explained by looking closely at how the Rwandese manage their environment.

Of particular importance is their stance on plastics: Rwanda is now entering its fourth year with a nation-wide law banning all plastic bags.

As Canada continues to debate the future role of plastic bags, it is worth looking at the Rwandan example, and understanding how such an initiative operates, and what benefits it can bring.

Toronto is the only Canadian city with a mandatory fee to the consumer of five cents per bag. However, in recent months Toronto mayor Rob Ford has repeatedly attacked the fee, and has explicitly stated that he wishes to get rid of it. Why you may ask? The answer: consumers are apparently annoyed.

A spokeswoman for the mayor, Adrienne Batra, told CBC news in December 2010 that “the mayor speaks with residents every day, and the thorny issue of the bag tax keeps coming up. People are sick and tired of being nickel-and-dimed to death.”

It seems that Mayor Ford may be ignoring the facts, as multiple reports have indicated that the tax has greatly reduced the purchase of plastic bags in Canada. For example, Metro grocery stores have reported a drop of 80 per cent since 2009.

This reduction in plastic bag use is important for the Canadian environment, says Franz Hartmann, Executive Director of the Toronto Environmental Alliance.

“Plastic bags require fossil fuels and many chemicals to be produced. This is having a negative impact on the environment, and using up precious materials. They are also a major source of liter in Toronto, and are having a bad impact on wildlife outside the city.”

Although the fee is playing a positive role, it is worth looking past initiatives that simply aim to reduce use and toward those that target outright elimination. The perfect case study is the fight against plastic bags in Rwanda, a fight that has led to their complete demise.

For anyone who has travelled in Africa the ubiquitous nature of plastic bags sprawled everywhere is an undeniable reality. The problem has not gone unnoticed though: several African countries have been working to ban plastic bags for years.

Located in Eastern Africa, Rwanda is largely known for its tragic genocide that exploded in April 1994. Since then it has tended to operate as a relatively unknown country outside certain political and economic circles. However, for such a small, developing nation it is home to a variety of unique, forward thinking policies.

In 2008, Rwanda declared a nation-wide ban on all plastic bags.

The initiative was a response to the two most common ailments caused by plastic: a well documented understanding of plastic's negative environmental impacts, but equally influential, the extensive physical presence of bags around the country.

Dr. Rose Mukankomje, the Director General of the Rwanda Environmental Authority (REMA), has been at the forefront of this policy, and continues to work on a daily basis to monitor its progress.

“In 2004, the Ministry of the Environment began to conduct studies on the use of plastic bags in Rwanda,” she explains. “At that time people had started to see plastic invading everywhere—black, yellow, red colored bags—causing even visual pollution.”

In addition to the visual pollution, research from the National University of Rwanda reported the widespread environmental consequences of plastic. “Plastic was not only all over the ground, but underneath as well. This hindered agricultural production in Rwanda, as plants cannot grow past the plastic. As well, our water sources were becoming highly polluted with plastic being found inside many dead fish,” Dr. Mukankomje recalls.

The first step was raising awareness about this information. This began in 2005 during the national day of cleaning, called Umuganda. As the communities around Rwanda began to clean up they were asked to collect all the plastic they could find.

“We came up with a huge, huge amount of plastic—in the land, around our compounds, everywhere—everyone was scared,” says Dr. Mukankomje.

This event signaled the turning point. It not only sensitized many Rwandans to the problem of plastic within the country, but it got politicians thinking about the issue as well—President Paul Kagame took part in this event. A nation-wide campaign began by flooding the media. Furthermore, local NGOs and businesses were commissioned to create alternatives—mainly cotton or banana leaf bags.

The advocacy was a success and in 2008 a bill was finally passed to ban plastic bags within Rwanda. While there was still much resistance from the affected private sector, the culmination of the campaign can largely be attributed to developing a general consensus among Rwandans. Dr. Mukankomje explains, “You need a policy to get rid of plastic bags, but it must be wanted to be successful.”

The benefits of Rwanda’s plastic bag ban were quickly evident: in 2008 UN Habitat named Kigali the cleanest city in all of Africa. Now three years since the bill was passed, Rwanda remains a plastic bag-free country, and has developed a reputation across the region for its extreme cleanliness. The passing of the bill coupled with Rwanda’s monthly day of cleaning has insured that it remains this way, and will continue for the foreseeable future.

As Toronto debates the future of plastic bags, the story of Rwanda, now more than ever, should be considered. Though different in many fundamental ways, Canada, like Rwanda, relies greatly on its natural resources. Thus, the future health of the land is of pivotal importance in both countries.

“Human civilization has worked just fine without plastic bags. It’s only been in the last 30 years that they’ve reared their ugly head,” says Hartmann. “Getting rid of them completely is the best solution. I don’t see what the issue is.”

Eliminating plastic bags will play a huge first step in curbing the prevalence of plastics in the Canadian environment. As Dr. Mukankomje frames it, “We must not see this as a challenge, but as an opportunity.”

Mayor Ford, take note.

Ryan Kohls is a freelance journalist out of Peterborough, Ontario.

Bag in tree

Sinixt in Vancouver Courts

Tim McSorley — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 06:14:57 +0000

"Extinct" nation defends traditional territory

VANCOUVER—Throughout January and early February 2011, members of the Sinixt Nation were in Vancouver attending a BC Supreme Court case resulting from their three-week-long anti-logging blockade in October 2010. In this case, Sunshine Logging Ltd., as well as the Attorney-General and Ministry of Forests, are respondents to the Sinixt injunction that was obtained at that time (and which granted a temporary halt to logging operations).

The territory of the Sinixt is located in the south-east region of the province in the Slocan Valley area between the Columbia and Kootenay Rivers (including the Upper and Lower Arrow Lakes, for which the Sinixt are also named). They began the blockade in October 2010 to protect Perry Ridge, the site of proposed logging. According to the Sinixt, Perry Ridge is an important archeological site as well as some of the last remaining untouched wilderness in their territory.

The Sinixt are an interior Salish people that were declared extinct by the federal government in 1956, effectively eliminating Sinixt from any benefits under the Indian Act, including a land base (i.e., a reserve). Their traditional territory spans the US–Canada border, which was established in 1846. Many Sinixt gravitated towards the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington State (which had several different tribal groups concentrated there, including Okanagan and Nez Perce). Some 80 per cent of Sinixt territory, however, is north of the border.

The Sinixt territory has been devastated by a century of industrial mining, logging and dams. Fifteen dams have been built in the region, centred around the Columbia River Basin. In fact, just one year after Canada declared the Sinixt extinct, the US–Canada Columbia River Treaty was signed (in 1957), granting the US access to vast amounts of water and hydroelectric energy from this dam system.

The dams, which have destroyed salmon habitat (a primary food source for the Columbia River peoples), are used to supply power to numerous metal smelters, including aluminum, zinc, and lead. Corporations such as Cominco (now owned by Teck Resources Ltd.) have dumped millions of tons of toxic pollutants into the Columbia River.

For the past 25 years, members of the Sinixt Nation have campaigned for recognition of their sovereignty and in defence of their land. Some also demand that the federal government re-establish the Arrow Lakes Indian Band and reserve.

Since 1989, the Sinixt have maintained a presence at Vallican along the Slocan River. The camp was established to protect burial grounds and archeological sites unearthed by road construction in 1987. At that time, the Ministry of Highways (which builds the roads and bridges for logging companies) made no effort to contact any Sinixt and instead deposited skeletal remains and archeological objects into museums.

In 1997, the Sinixt, along with local residents and environmentalists, blocked road construction on Perry Ridge. As many as 300 people participated. In 2000, non-Native residents of the area protested clear-cut logging by blockading the logging road. Most recently, on October 26, 2010, the Sinixt Nation asserted their sovereignty by initiating the Sinixt Slhu7kin' (Perry Ridge) Protection Camp on their ancestral lands.

In addition to government bureaucracy and intransigence, the Sinixt also face obstacles from neighbouring Indian Act band councils, including those of the Okanagon National Alliance and the Lower Kootenay Band, both of which claim Sinixt land as part of their traditional territories. In Washington state, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation has asserted itself as the sole representative of Sinixt in both the US and Canada.

Hearings into the case concluded on February 4, and, according to the Nelson Star, a decision could be rendered within the month. For updates, visit http://mediacoop.ca.

This article was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Gord Hill is from the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation and has been active in Indigenous and anti-capitalist movements for many years, including writing and graphic arts under the pseudonym Zig Zag.

Sinixt in court

Murky Waters

Moira Peters — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 10:02:19 +0000

Contentious mink farm development given green light

YARMOUTH COUNTY, NS—A proposed mink ranch development on Sloans Lake appears to be moving forward, much to the consternation of area residents who had been under the impression that the development application had been rejected under a municipal land-use bylaw.

“The health of the Wentworth-Carleton watershed is already seriously strained by high-density fur farming at its headwaters,” says Debbie Hall, an area resident. “It’s very depressing. Sloans Lake is one of the last clean lakes in the watershed.”

On October 28, 2009, following years of worsening lake conditions and the continuing proliferation of blue-green algae blooms, the Municipality of the District of Yarmouth (MODY) voted to amend a municipal land-use bylaw, increasing, from 328 to 500 feet, the required minimum setback distance from lakes and rivers for buildings, manure storage facilities, and burial sites for the disposal of dead animals used in conjunction with fur ranches and hog and fowl farms.

An application submitted by R&N Farms Limited for a mink ranch development on Sloans Lake, roughly 20 kilometres north of Yarmouth, was initially denied because the development proposal did not meet the new setback criteria. But R&N revised its application to meet the demands of the revised bylaw and has since been granted 14 building permits for the same location.

MODY Development Officer John Sullivan confirmed that the project is moving forward but could not give specific details.

“It looks like we won the battle but lost the war,” rues Hall. “The community had hoped that the bylaw amendment would curtail the development altogether.”

There has been much discussion over the last several years as to the source(s) of the excess nutrients that have caused blue-green algae t overrun several Yarmouth and Digby County lakes. Possible contributing factors include faulty lakeside septic systems and run-off containing agro-industrial fertilizers, but many residents of southwestern Nova Scotia believe under-regulated mink ranching practices are to blame, and the primary causal source to be improperly disposed carcasses, manure, urine and waste feed from mink ranches located near the Wentworth-Carleton headwaters in neighbouring Digby County.

A report released in October 2010 by the Water and Wastewater Branch of Nova Scotia Environment (NSE) confirmed that several lakes in the region are showing increasing nutrient levels and deteriorating water quality due, at least in part, to nutrient inputs from human activities such as mink farming.

The blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, that are thriving in many Yarmouth and Digby County lakes is a toxin-generating microscopic plant that flourishes in water containing high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen. The algae's prevalence has raised concerns about health and safety, reduced property values, damage to local ecologies and the proper regulation of industry.

“It’s clear to the people who live in this area and are directly affected by the water pollution that the problem is getting worse as the mink farming industry expands,” says Debbie Boudreau of the Tri-County Watershed Protection Association, a nascent Yarmouth-based community group devoted to bringing relief to the affected lakes. “Our environment is suffering under the weight of 1.8 million mink; what will happen as the industry continues to expand?”

The 2010 NSE report, entitled A Water Quality Survey of Ten Lakes in the Carleton River Watershed Area [of] Yarmouth and Digby Counties, lists mink farms, a mink food processing plant and an aquaculture operation as “three large nutrient sources which could potentially be stimulating algal production in [the headwater] lakes.”

According to data cited by the Tri-County Watershed Protection Association, there is a pollution problem when total phosphorous levels in a lake have reached 50 micrograms per litre. A 2008 NSE water quality survey found total phosphorous levels in Placides Lake—a headwater in the Wentworth-Carleton watershed—to be 740 micrograms per litre at surface and 5200 at a depth of seven metres.

“Our lakes are seriously polluted,” affirms Boudreau. “The situation is dire.”

On April 29, 2010, Nova Scotia Agriculture Minister John MacDonell introduced Bill 53, a legislative measure proposing more stringent governmental regulation of the province’s fur industry. The bill was passed the following week; draft regulations being developed under The Fur Industry Act are scheduled for completion in the latter half of 2011.

Though acknowledging that The Fur Industry Act could be a step in the right direction, Hall remains skeptical.

“There hasn’t been any apparent consultation with non-governmental environmental groups, the public, nor with water quality or nutrient pollution experts external to the government,” said Hall, referring to the content and thrust of Bill 53, and the process of drafting the regulations that are to comprise the Act.

“The only consultation was with the Nova Scotia Mink Breeders Association, the entity that needs to be regulated,” says Boudreau. “It seems a conflict of interest. The Department of Agriculture—both supporter and regulator of the fur industry—shacking up with that same industry to mutually formulate the regulations that, ostensibly, will govern it.”

According to the province, the Nova Scotia mink industry generated roughly $80 million in export sales in 2009. One and a half million minks are raised in Nova Scotia each year on almost 80 mink farms, according to the CBC. Roughly 85 per cent of provincial production occurs in Digby and Yarmouth Counties.

Steven is a writer from Harmony, NS. This article was originally published by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Murky Waters

Water to Mine

Moira Peters — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 05:07:19 +0000

Goldcorp’s Penasquito project in Mexico robs semi-desert region of precious resource

ZACATECAS, MEXICO—Five years ago a new neighbour arrived in Mazapil, Mexico, promising employment, medical services and general development for the local peasant communities as it hoped to develop one of the world’s largest gold mines. The newcomer—Canadian mining company Goldcorp Inc—built its mine but has yet to honour its promises to the thousands of people of Mazapil. Particularly for the residents of Cedros, Las Palmas and El Vergel—communities adjacent to the massive industrial complex—hope for a brighter future has dimmed.

In fact, Goldcorp’s Penasquito Mine has turned out to be a troublesome addition to the community, guzzling the municipality's scarce water sources, while its most significant contribution has been contamination and social division.

“Even though it has been a mining town by tradition, [Mazapil] has never been prosperous. Its population has managed to survive off agriculture and the raising of livestock,” according to an April 2010 article in the local paper, El Diario de Coahuila. The ejido system still prevails in this part of the country. It consists of community members, known as the ejidatarios, sharing a common landholding, both for agriculture and residence.

"We have had a very hard life and struggled enormously to upkeep this ejido," says Hernandez Herrera. "We have already suffered so much, and now, this monster comes to devastate our territories. What will we do once the water runs out? And it is clear that it will run out! Because in every place where a mine establishes itself, the water eventually runs out."

James Rodriguez is an independent documentary photographer based in Guatemala. He authors mimundo.org, where a version of this photo essay was originally published.

Penasquito.Flowers

Penasquito.Doll

Penasquito.Farmer

Penasquito.Kitchen

Penasquito.Sign

Penasquito.Irrigation

Penasquito.Armando

Penasquito.Dudes

Penasquito.Mine Piles

Penasquito.Mine Truck

Canada’s Largest Environmental Lawsuit a Victory

Moira Peters — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 05:08:59 +0000

Ontario court rules Vale must pay $36 M to Port Colborne residents

FREDERICTON—Almost 10 years after Wilfred Pearson, a retired truck driver from Port Colborne, Ontario, signed his name as the lead plaintiff to the largest environmental class action lawsuit filed in Canadian history, the verdict is in—and it is in his favour.

Port Colborne residents claim that their property values were diminished by the levels of nickel emitted from Inco's refinery. On July 6, 2010, Ontario Supreme Court Justice J.R. Henderson sided with the residents and awarded more than 7,000 households in Port Colborne a total of $36 million. Households in the Rodney Street area, in the shadow of the nickel refinery, were each awarded $23,000 while those living on the east side of Port Colborne were each awarded $9,000, and the west side, $2,500. Vale (formerly Inco) has said the company will appeal.

"It has been a very long 10 years. People said to me the day we launched this lawsuit that you can't fight large corporations and expect to win. They were wrong. I hope this court victory shows people can stand up and fight for justice," said Diana Wiggins, who originally called the Canadian Environmental Law Association, setting the lawsuit in motion.

The lawsuit’s initial defendants included Inco, the Ontario Ministry of Health, the Ontario Ministry of Environment, the Niagara Regional Health Department, the Niagara District School Board, the Niagara Catholic School Board and the City of Port Colborne.

In February 2001, Pearson was the lead plaintiff on the lawsuit of 8,000 plaintiffs who originally sought $750 million in damages to health, property value and quality of life. Although that suit failed in 2002 to be certified, it was subsequently modified to focus on devaluation of property. The suit was certified on November 18, 2005. The plaintiffs settled out of court with all defendants except Inco. In late June 2006, Inco’s efforts to stop the class-action lawsuit were dismissed by the Supreme Court of Canada. The lawsuit that resulted in the July 6 verdict went to trial in October 2009.

Eric Gillespie, the lawyer representing the Port Colborne residents, said, "Our clients are very pleased with the decision. It's a very significant award and it's been made to the entire community."

Inco opened the Port Colborne nickel refinery in 1918, cashing in on the post-war demand for nickel. The refinery was a major employer in Port Colborne for decades after; the workforce peaked at about 2000 in the 1950s. The nickel refinery stopped refining nickel in 1984. Today, fewer than 200 people work at the plant that refines cobalt and other precious metals.

Wiggins and Ellen Smith, two Port Colborne mothers, founded Neighbours Helping Neighbours in 2001 to tackle the nickel contamination problem in their city. Smith became the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit when Pearson's health problems became too severe for him to continue.

Inco became one of the main landowners in the area in what many believed was an apparent attempt to buy contamination concerns, beginning in the 1960s. Some properties along Rodney Street, deemed to be the most contaminated, were remediated by Inco.

Residents feel that the Inco refinery is responsible for the heavy metal contamination of their soils, and Inco has admitted to contamination by nickel, copper, cobalt and arsenic. An estimated 20,000 tonnes of nickel oxide, a carcinogen, was spread over the Port Colborne area during the refinery's operation. In some areas of Port Colborne, nickel exceeds 20,000 parts per million (ppm). Ontario's Ministry of the Environment considers the safe upper threshold for nickel in residential soils to be 200 ppm.

Wiggins became aware of the extent of the contamination after talking to a friend who had been hired by Inco to pump out contaminated soil. Contaminants were said to be escaping into the ground water and wells. For decades, Inco had been dumping electrolyte nickel or "green liquor" into an aquifer below the Rodney Street neighbourhood. Over time, a fracture developed in the bedrock. By 2000, this "green liquor" was seeping into Lake Erie and surrounding areas.

Wiggins introduced herself to Smith after reading a story about her fears of property contamination in the local Tribune. In June 2000, Smith and her partner Craig Edwards requested that the Ministry of Environment test the soil on their Rodney Street area property. Smith and Edwards were astounded by the results. Their property contained between 14,000 and 16,000 ppm nickel, and over 600 ppm lead.

Smith, who is now the mother of two teenagers, wrote in 2003, "I have enjoyed watching my children play with their trucks and cars, making roads and bridges in the dirt. I thought that some day they might wish to become engineers. We have had numerous rounds of baseball, catch or Frisbee in the backyard. We spent warm summer days at the ballpark. Now the children's play areas are restricted. The ballpark is chained shut. They can't explore their world without barriers. They can't even enjoy the surroundings of their own home. They can no longer be the children they were."

Smith and Edwards paid off their home and property only to later find out their soil was contaminated. Smith said, "How can we sell this house and property to another starting family when we know what lurks beneath the ground and in the walls? As a mother watching her young children grow, I am sickened and at a loss for words to explain the feeling of not knowing what the future holds for my children. As a Port Colborne resident, I feel personally violated by those we trusted to protect our environment and our health and safety."

Wiggins recalls the moment in the year of 2000 that sprang her into action. "My son would come home from school quite often complaining of severe sinus headaches and stomach aches. He also had rashes on his body. At the beginning of these ailments, I did not suspect there was an environmental problem. I had my son tested for nickel in his urine. But when I went to my son's pediatrician for the test results, he was elusive. The doctor wouldn't look me in the eye, stood with his back to me and stated that he 'wasn't allowed to discuss this issue' with me."

Wiggins discovered that Inco had purchased a property and sold it to the Niagara District School Board.

"The original landowners farmed the [property]. It had been said that the lady of this house suffered from a severe skin rash, so severe that it was difficult for her to work on the land. A few years after Inco purchased the land from the couple, the Niagara District School Board acquired it and built Humberstone School," said Wiggins.

Wiggins spoke with various specialists in the environmental and health fields. "As time went on and more information started surfacing, it literally was making me feel sick to my stomach every time I put my son on the bus," said Wiggins.

Wiggins and Smith reluctantly joined the Community-Based Risk Assessment (CBRA) process—a process that was supposed to determine the risks of the refinery contamination and a process to clean up the contamination.

"Getting quite discouraged, I started to attend their meetings in September 2000. As time went by, I became even more discouraged as it was becoming increasingly clear that nothing was going to be done to ensure the safety of the people living with such high levels of contamination," said Wiggins. "I doubted this company-sponsored process. Here we have a known contamination in our city. However, it is still just sitting here for children to play in, people to grow crops in, for us to breathe."

The suppression of a phytotoxicity report from her son's school and soil test results in the Rodney Street area worried Wiggins. She also learned that the Ministry of Environment's office had been holding strategic communication meetings on how to deal with Port Colborne residents and their concerns about environmental contamination.

Smith remembers uncovering documents that demonstrated the government withheld information about the refinery's environmental problems. Reading each page made Smith push harder for the truth and for justice.

Nasal cavity cancers, linked to exposure to nickel oxide, have claimed the lives of several refinery workers, some before they received their first pension cheque. Surviving family members blame the refinery for the loss of their loved ones.

In November 2000, the community was shocked to hear government scientist Al Kuja say, "There's areas where every single household has someone sick, every single family, some member has something—cancers, rashes, leukemia... Personally I think that something is going on."

In early 2001, soil at Humberstone School tested at levels of 1,200 ppm of nickel.

"I spoke with the school representatives, trying to get them to do something to protect the children. At one point, I had a conversation with a Niagara School Board staff member in charge of the safety and wellness of the children. He said, 'If it were me, I would just move my child to another school.' I responded, 'That would be fine for my son... but what about the other 200 children in the school?' It appeared to me that authorities were not explaining to parents what the contamination statistics meant, so how could parents make an informed decision concerning the health risks for their children? There were children with quite severe skin rashes and ongoing headaches and stomach aches."

Wiggins pulled her son from Humberstone School in February 2001 to demand measures be taken to protect the children in the school. The school obliged and a week later her son was back at school with new rules: students were not allowed to play on grass, they had to wash their hands when they came in from the outside, and windows in the school were to to be kept shut when farmers were working on the land. She enrolled her son in a different school in the fall of 2002. The Humberstone School was shut down in 2003 and demolished in 2008.

The women, Pearson and others from Port Colborne have demonstrated outside Inco’s shareholders’ meetings in Toronto, holding signs such as, "Inco Nickel Found In My Kitchen, Attic And Left Lung." One of the more memorable shareholders’ meetings was in 2003 when Port Colborne residents handed out what they called "dirt bags"—bags of their contaminated soil—to Inco shareholders.

Both women monitor Vale’s problems at home and abroad. In 2003, Wiggins motivated others to organize a global day of action against Inco. In October of that year, people around the world demonstrated and held public presentations, film screenings and vigils in Newfoundland, Ontario, Guatemala, Indonesia and Kanaky-New Caledonia in the first global day of action against a Canadian mining company.

Vale, now under Brazilian ownership, has provoked the creation of a network determined to coordinate actions among communities affected by Vale in Brazil and worldwide. Striking Vale workers in Canada recently visited Vale-affected communities in Brazil and Indonesia.

Tracy Glynn sits on the Board of the Dominion/Media Co-op and is an organizer of the New Brunswick Media Co-op. She wrote a masters thesis on the the environmental and health problems of Inco's smelter and mines in Indonesia. She sits on the Board of Mining Watch Canada and is co-editor of the website MinesAndCommunities.org.

Inco Diana and Ellen

Inco Indonesia

Port Colborne's INCO chemical pond

Notes from the Tar Pits: Flying Above an Open Pit Graveyard

macdonald — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 21:44:17 +0000

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Notes from the Tar Pits:
Flying Above an Open Pit Graveyard
Macdonald Stainsby // June 15, 2007

The plane cleared the tarmac and into the air we went, with a warning that the flight was going to have to go a little bit to the east of the usual, as the forest fires were too heavy. But the plume of white obfuscation that rose more than all the others was Suncor’s, with 2nd through 6th place going to Syncrude, CNRL, Albian/Shell, Total and (off in the distance) Petro Canada. It was completely impossible to spot any difference between the forest fires and the plumes of death-toxins breaking up into the atmosphere.

The giant tailings lakes are a sight to behold. The one near Syncrude, as I discovered from our pilot, is among the largest human made dams in the entire world. Though, I’m getting “biggest” fatigue; Every time I learn a new angle on how this is operating, it’s about the “biggest”. As a gentleman who drove us out of Fort MacKay said the other day: “If it’s the biggest in the world, it’s here,” and he was making zero reference to anything in particular.

Along with the largest craters in the world, deep pits of black sided land, being munched away, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and through every holiday are the highways being constructed. While people living downstream in Fort Chipewyan have unsafe running water in their homes and are a seasonal fly-in community, the roads to “projects” are as relentlessly constructed as the tar is pulled out of the earth. There are full private highways, and when it’s time to pull the tar from under the highway, they simply move it and build another one. Oil is still oil, after all (even when it is tar and synthetic/mock).

Notes from the Tar Pits: From McMurray to MacKay

macdonald — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 00:58:43 +0000

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Notes from the Tar Pits: From McMurray to MacKay
Macdonald Stainsby
June 14, 2007