NDP pledges more help for Grassy Narrows
Horwath says more must be done for victims of mercury poisoning
GRASSY NARROWS—Mercury poisoning of its residents from an old paper mill downstream is the reason this remote northwestern Ontario reserve, a 90minute drive from Kenora, most often makes the news.
But Chief Rudy Turtle says the need for a new water treatment plant is a big deal, too, given that almost 1,000 residents here have had to boil their drinking water for “eight or nine years.”
“To do a real good job of it, we need at least $15 million,” he said. He briefed Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath about the details as he took her on a our in a cold rain Friday, stopping both at the ineffective Grassy Lake water treatment plant, which has inadequate filtration systems, and also at a federal health centre, staffed by a doctor from Kenora two days a month and a nurse at other times.
Although water is also a federal responsibility on reserves, Horwath has pledged in her platform for the June 7 election to “act first” to help First Nations and not let jurisdictional disputes stand in the way.
“We will not sit by and let another generation go by and have this community continue to be in a situation where they don’t have clean drinking water, where the mercury poisoning … is not being addressed,” she told reporters after a shore lunch of walleye with reserve officials in a community hall that doubles as a church.
The building is just down a hill from the reserve water tower and overlooks Grassy Lake, part of the Wabigoon river system contaminated with mercury sediment from 50 years ago.
It has poisoned the fish and many of the people who eat them ein. as a main source of prott Although Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne’s government has set aside $85 million for a cleanup and will index to inflation the compensation payments to victims of mercury poisoning — they suffer from tremors, loss of muscle co-ordination, slurred speech and tunnel vision — Horwath said more needs to be done.
She has promised $3 million toward the construction of a new medical treatment centre, planned by the federal government, for mercury poisoning victims, and an improved financial compensation system for them if she is elected premier.
“There’s a couple of problems that exist that we’re going to fix,” she said.
Criteria for assessing the impact of the mercury poisoning are too strict, she said, and this
barriers” to financial aid, which starts at $250 a month.
“We’re going to have a look at that,” Horwath said. “Their illnesses are not being recognized.”
Aside from the money to help the federal government build the treatment centre, the NDP leader, in second place behind Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford in public opinion polls, said the province would contribute $1 million in annual operating costs to help
nsure victims can be treated closer to home.
The medical centre likely won’t be built for several years.
Wynne said her administration was the first to take action after decades of PC, Liberal and New Democrat governments failing to act on nagging health concerns in the area.
“This is a shame that is not partisan,” she told reporters in Toronto.
“As soon as we found there was new technology to actually move some of the mercury and clean up the river … We made an investment and made that happen.”
Last year the Star revealed Ontario government officials knew in the 1990s that mercury contamination was a bigger problem than publicly acknowledged.
Provincial environment commissioner Dianne Saxe said in a report last fall it is “outrageous” that the problem has festered for so long.
A recent study found 58 per cent of community members have been diagnosed with or are suspected of having Minamata disease, a severe neurological illness caused by mercury poisoning.
“The conditions faced by these Indigenous communities would not be tolerated elsewhere in Ontario,” Saxe wrote in her last annual report.
Between 1962 and 1970, about 10 tonnes of mercury from a paper mill in Dryden were dumped in the Wabigoon River, which flows into Grassy Narrows.
Since then, the Star and Earthroots joined forces on an investigation and the Star found mercury in soil behind the mill. It is not known yet whether it is leaching into the river.