Alberta should put people before profits

Page 6

The Swan Hills sit in central northern Alberta, and water from the hills flows down through the traditional and reserve lands of a dozen or so First Nations. In the centre of the Swan Hills is the misleadingly renamed Swan Hills Treatment Centre, which sounds more like a mental health facility than what it really is, a hazardous waste treatment centre (as it used to be called).

Two weeks ago, the Edmonton Sun's editorial cartoonist pictured the centre's early warning system as a tortoise carrying a sign reading "run for your life." Sadly, it's too true of the provincial government's attitude, not only towards the mega-expensive governmental mega-project in Swan Hills, but towards all of the mega-developments sprouting up across northern Alberta.

On Jan. 15, after we've lost track of the number of leaks and spills in the Swan Hills, the government slapped an enforcement order on Chem-Security and Bovar Inc. under the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act. Essentially, it will require the companies to "conduct a comprehensive inventory of PCB, dioxin and furan sources from the plant" before Feb. 18. By June, the companies will need to provide an analysis of "all potential adverse impacts to air, soil, surface water, groundwater, vegetation and wildlife" from the plant.

This is what's wrong with this scenario:

First, that it takes spill after spill after spill for the provincial government to do anything is a travesty. If it weren't for the increasingly strident calls for action in the press, we might still be waiting for something to happen.

Second, all they've told the companies to do is: one - find out what dangerous stuff they have, and two - find out what it might do to the area around the plant. Hazardous waste has been trucked in and incinerated in the Swan Hills for more than a decade. They're only checking this out now?

Finally, and by far the most important, there was something left off that list. Or someone. Go ahead. Look up three paragraphs. That list in quotation marks is complete from the government news release announcing the "additional monitoring." Animals, plants, water, air, soil. No people.

Thousands of Aboriginal people live in and around the Swan Hills. Precious few non-Aboriginal people use the area as intensely.

Alberta Health has asked that a "human health assessment" be done, and so it will be. But what about the people who have eaten deer and fish from the area, drank the water, breathed the air.

Ten years is a long time to wait. To wait any longer is criminal.

The attitude of the government of Alberta on the Swan Hills pollution fiasco - as with forestry, mining and the untouchable oil and gas industries - also needs to be investigated. Such a cavalier lack of concern for people is deplorable. A healthy bottom line only matters when there are healthy people to enjoy it.