Approval given to import toxic waste to Swan Hills

Page 3

Toxic waste from outside Alberta may soon be treated at the Swan Hills plant in northeast Alberta.

Alberta's Natural Resources Conservation Board has approved he province's bid to import toxic waste for treatment at the plant, which sits on the traditional lands of the First Nations that signed Treaty 8 in 1899.

"What we're going to see happening if they get away with this is the concentration of the worst of the worst net to Indian lands," said Brian Staszenski, executive director of the Environment Resource Centre in Edmonton.

Cabinet must pass an order in council to permit the importation of hazardous waste. The NRCB also said certain conditions must be met:

- Emission problems must be fixed before cancer-causing PCBs or PCPs are imported;

- Environmental monitoring must be stepped up in co-operation with Aboriginal people and regional residents.

"Until Chem-Security (plan operators) cleans up their act, they will not be able to import anything at all," said Jim Badger, chief of the Sucker Creek Band.

A number of Aboriginal hunt and trap within a 48-kilometre radius of the Alberta Special Waste Treatment Centre at Swan Hills, said Badger. Sucker Creek Band is one of nine bands in the area represented by the Lesser Slave Lake Indian Regional Council.

According to studies released by Chem-Security, poly chlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, and other contaminants have been found in soil, sediments, fish, plants and small animals in the area. The levels of PCBs being released are 10 times the level allowed by the Ontario government, Badger said.

The plant also represents a major financial loss to the province. The Alberta government, which owns the facility jointly with Bovar Inc., has already sunk $250 million into the plant's operations, and subsidizes it with another $25 million per year. Subsidies are expected to total another $379 million by 2008, but the NRCB decision is supposed to save $80.4 million. But, the Opposition Liberals say that still means another $300 million loss to taxpayers.

Nor does the private sector Bovar ever stand to lose on the deal. Under a joint-venture agreement, the government picks up all the operating losses while Bovar is guaranteed a profit.

Alberta's Tory Premier Ralph Klein defends the NRCB's decision, saying he hopes Alberta becomes the hazardous waste capital of Canada.

"When that plant was established in 1984, the province said 'Yes, we have a responsibility as society to pick up and subsidize to a certain degree the cleanup of hazardous waste in this province'," Klein said.

But environmentalists, Aboriginals and even some of Klein's back-benchers disagree.

"What Mr. Klein is trying to do is justify the big subsidy that's going to Bovar," said Staszenski. "If we were cleaning up our province it might be worth it but 80 per cent of Alberta waste is not going to Swan Hills."

Oil and gas industry waste does not have to go to Swan Hills for treatment, Staszenski said, so that leaves only 20 per cent of the province's hazardous waste for the plant to handle.

There are no PCBs left in Alberta to be treated, and because the substance is outlawed, industry and manufacturers are not using it anymore, Staszenski said. Some new technologies are being developed to dispose of PCBs stockpiled in other provinces without incinerating them, he added, and some provinces are using portable incinerators.

Richard Secord, lawyer for the Lesser Slave Lake Tribal Council and the Indian Association of Alberta, said the two groups may appeal the NRCB decision.