A public meeting and feature film screening on March 22 focuses Hamiltonians’ attention on the struggle for clean water. It’s an ongoing theme in a city which had the two most frequently closed beaches in Lake Ontario in 2015, and where highly toxic airport contamination spread across rural Hamilton remains unaddressed more than six years after it was discovered.
The world water day event next Tuesday at 294 James North at 6:30 pm organized by Hamilton chapters of the Council of Canadians and the Blue Dot Movement includes a First Nations speaker from the Grassy Narrows reserve still afflicted by massive mercury poisoning uncovered decades ago, and a feature film that follows an aboriginal warrior and lawyer whose community is on the front lines of fracking.
Fractured Land documents the intensely personal human story of a young First Nations warrior and lawyer confronting hydraulic fracking, resource politics and Canada’s colonial legacy. Produced in association with CBC’s documentary Channel and Knowledge Network, it won the Best BC Film and the Vancouver International Film Festival Canadian Audience awards last year [trailer].
The on-going water contamination problems in Hamilton closed the beaches at Bayfront Park and Pier 4 more than 85 percent of the time last year. That’s the same area of the harbour where needles, condoms and other sewage waste were discovered in November along the waterfront trail, and close to where the city is currently planning a massive condominium development.
Other long-standing harbour water toxicity problems from coal tar deposits at Randle Reef and other industrial activities were joined a few years ago by discovery of world-record levels of chemical contamination in the city’s rural area.
Disturbing levels of the flame retardant perfluoroctane sulphonate (PFOS) were uncovered by Environment Canada scientists in a 2009 study on turtles in the Welland River downstream for the airport who were surprised that their ‘clean’ control site was far worse than the dirty sites they were investigating. The contamination was made public by CATCH in March 2011 and the following month Environment Hamilton testing confirmed it was coming from the airport.
PFOS is bio-accumulative and on the ‘dirty dozen’ list of internationally banned chemicals. Its discovery here spurred significant provincial fish consumption warnings for the Binbrook Conservation Area (Lake Niapenco). It has been implicated in breast cancer, kidney disease, ADHD and suppression of the human immune system
There’s a still unresolved responsibility battle involving all three levels of government and the private company that operates Hamilton’s airport. City officials say the source of the contamination on the airport’s fire training pad has since been “stabilized”, but a 2011 report on how to proceed with the cleanup remains secret.
The airport fire training pad was heavily used in the 1980s and 1990s while the facility was managed by the municipality but owned by the federal government. Similar contamination was known at other Canadian sites but didn’t spur federal or provincial authorities to look for it in Hamilton.
Testing found the chemical at the airport more than a year before its presence was acknowledged by provincial officials or the airport managers, and was only admitted after independent testing by a board member of Environment Hamilton.
The last public document on the airport’s website is dated from December of that year, the local office of the provincial environment ministry is not responding to CATCH queries about the situation, and a risk assessment study launched two years ago by Transport Canada is not expected to be filed until late summer or early fall.
At the urging of the Blue Dot movement, Hamilton city council became the first in Ontario to endorse the call for the inclusion of the right to clean water and a healthy environment in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The March 22 meeting is part of an effort to convince the Ontario government to follow suit.