Sludge Watch ==> Paper sludge 'berm' in Pelham - Assurances Little Comfort to Residents

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

Sludgewatch Admin:

Looks like the Ministry of the Environment is now hiding the documents on 
groundwater contamination underneath the berms....saying those are just 
'historical' information, and they have failed to post those documents on 
their 'Sound-Sorb Information' website.

Some of the Ministry staff have gone to great lengths to hide evidence of 
groundwater contamination.  First they said that the Polyaromatic 
Hydrocarbon contamination under the berms must have come ....not from the 
contamination in the berms (which are many times over the contaminated site 
cleanup levels for hydrocarbons) but from the drilling mud from drilling the 
test wells (the MOE staff did the oversight of this drilling)..  Small 
point:  No drilling mud was used...and the MOE staff know it, since they 
were there.  Then the MOE said that maybe the ecoli contamination came from 
the well drillers....(gosh, not from the berm which is over 100,000 tonnes 
of soil matrix contaminated with as much as 500,000 ecoli per gram....) but 
again from those dastardly well drillers.

The MOE were there...did the well drillers poop into the well?  Did the 
Ministry discuss these alleged acts of contamination with their contract 
well drillers?

No.
The well drillers were never accused of these misdeeds, and they were 
promptly and properly paid.

These tales of well driller pollution are fictions invented by our 
government to support their own inaction on cleaning up these mountains of 
leaching paper mill industrial sludges.

The Ministry keeps hoping that if they test infrequently enough that the 
public will become discouraged and fail to protest their inaction and the 
destruction of the quality of their drinking water source waters.

In the meanwhile, community after community suffers as the new dumping 
ground for industry...while the Ministry takes our tax money and sits on its 
hands.  I understand the MOE refuse to test the groundwater at the Pelham 
site...This way there will be no baseline test results andt they can claim 
that any contamination at the site might have been there before the berms.


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Printed from www.wellandtribune.ca web site
Friday, June 23, 2006

Welland Tribune
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Assurances little comfort for residents; Meeting held on sound sorb issue

ALLAN BENNER

Thursday, June 22, 2006 - 09:00

Local News - What they're doing is legal.

"We operate under 100 per cent legal authority," said David Brenzil from 
Empire Agri-Services Inc.

And Sound Sorb, the product his company is dumping to build a berm at 325 
Church St. has been "tested and monitored to death," he told the crowd of 
more than 150 people who gathered at the Fenwick Fire Hall Wednesday evening 
for a special Town of Pelham council meeting. "This isn't something that's 
new. It's been around for a long time." In fact, on his way to the fire hall 
for the meeting, he said he passed several sites where Sound-Sorb has been 
used in the last few years "without adverse effect."

And if the material was hazardous, he said the Ministry of the Environment 
would not "let it go out of the gate of the plant."

His assurances, however, did little to satiate the Pelham area residents 
concerned about the use of the paper fibre sludge - a byproduct of paper 
recycling - to build the berm.

Councillors passed a motion Monday to demand that the government enact all 
the recommendations of a report on Sound Sorb by an expert panel released 18 
months ago. Until those recommendations are in place, council demanded that 
an immediate moratorium on the building of all berms using Sound-Sorb be 
suspended.

Carl Hipkiss lives next door to the berm about 200 yards away.

"Last night my daughter was going to bed and brushing her teeth. She asked 
why the water was tasting and smelled funny," he recalled.

He's getting his water tested to make certain that the leachate produced by 
the pile of sludge hasn't contaminated his cistern.

And the odour his family has had to contend with is "unbearable," he 
complained. "You have to keep your windows shut and you doors closed."

His complaint was repeated by many people at the meeting.

When work on the berm began, Carolyn Botari said area residents knew little 
about the paper fibre biosolids being used in its construction.

They reluctantly began looking for information about the material.

"The more we looked the more disturbing the information became," she said.

She said the material contains e-coli, fecal chloroform and other 
potentially hazardous materials. Other dangerous materials only become 
evident after years of decomposition of the Sound-Sorb berms. "The enormous 
pile on Church Street, estimated to be 25,000 tonnes, has already begun to 
decompose. Pools of orange, black, brown, purple and green liquids are 
forming at the base of these berms. The leachate has already begun to seep 
into the surface water of surrounding ditches and watercourses."

Sound-Sorb is not a controlled substance, and Ministry of Environment 
district manager Paul Nieweglowski said that limits the MOE's control over 
what's happening at 325 Church St.

However, Nieweglowski said the Ministry can take action if they can provide 
evidence that it's having an adverse effect on the environment.

For that to happen, he said they need "good solid science behind it."

Since neighbours called the MOE about the berm, logging 40 complaints over 
the past two months - the MOE has been to the site 16 times, Nieweglowski 
said.

They've inspected the area and sampled the material along with ground water. 
They've also worked with the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority to 
address concerns about leachate running off the property.

A second smaller clay berm was added between the Sound-Sorb berm and area 
ditches.

Nieweglowski couldn't estimate how long it would take before test results 
are available, although he did make them a priority. "I can only say I've 
asked for it as quickly as possible," he said.

When the results are ready, he said the information will be publicly 
available. The MOE also tested for odour, determining on June 5 that there 
was a problem.

Brenzil said his company is also responding to the concerns raised by 
neighbouring residents. They've hired a third-party consultant.

"They had their people at the site and they're in the process right now of 
putting together a report using highly technical equipment to monitor the 
odour at the site and off site," he said.

When the report is ready it will be sent to the MOE directly from the 
consultant. From there, the consultant will come up with a "viable solution 
to mitigate the odour at the site," he said.

When the berm's complete, covered in topsoil with grass growing on it, he 
said the "odour and run off from this material will be stopped."

But that's nearly two months away.

Trucks will continue dumping the sludge there for three more weeks. Then it 
will need about a month to settle before the topsoil can be added.

By the time it's done, the L-shaped berm will be about 300 feet long by 
70-feet wide in the north-south section, and 180 feet long by 70-feet wide 
in the east-west section. In total, he said about 20,000 to 22,000 tonnes of 
the material will be dumped there to build the berm. But that's a figure are 
residents contested. Each of the more than 30 trucks that toll in there 
every day carry more than 30 tonnes of the material. By the time the berm's 
complete, Hipkiss estimated that somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 tonnes 
of the stuff would be piled there.