Treasury Board to pin down costs
Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Apr 06/01) - It's up to the Treasury Board of Canada to get an accurate total on environmental clean-up costs in the North.
Federal departments were to submit all information they have on contaminated sites landfills to a database developed by the board.
Last April, the Board began a two-year, $30 million program to carry out assessments on sample sites "in order to develop liability estimates," said a board official.
In the North, engineering studies were done on five DEW Line sites in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Baffin and Kitikmeot.
The engineering studies showed the cost of clean-ups is going up, mainly due to new requirements for disposal of PCB paints. In all but one case, the revised estimate was almost triple the original.
Scott Mitchell, head of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development's northern contaminated sites division, said last year Environment Canada ruled that any paint with more than 50 parts per million of PCBs must be disposed of in a PCB incinerator.
The decision came at the conclusion of a debate that had been waged since the mid 1990s, when the Department of National Defence first discovered high concentrations of PCBs in paint at abandoned DEW Line sites.
"This situation wasn't anticipated when the legislation was drafted, but the legislation still applies," said Environment Canada's Ed Collins.
Collins said that by the 50 parts per million standard, there are whales swimming in the Gulf of St. Lawrence that will be considered hazardous waste.
Arguing that the PCBs are bound up in the paint and cannot escape into the environment, DND asked Environment Canada to allow the paint to be landfilled.
People responsible for the clean-ups, still must figure out how the paint will be moved out.
"What do you do with a 1,000 gallon tank that's covered in PCB paint?" said Mitchell. "You can't use a cutting torch. The low temperatures would turn the PCBs into dioxins and furans."
In its liquid state, PCBs are relatively benign. When burned they turn into cancer-causing gases.
PCB was used in fire and moisture retardant paints. It is commonly found on interior walls of DEW Line sites.
