Online fundraiser launched to save Pelee Island Co-op
For more than 100 years, the Pelee Island Co-op has supplied residents and visitors with gasoline and groceries.
That may end as the cashstrapped Co-op struggles to meet a Ministry of Environment and Climate Change order to complete an $80,000 environmental study of the land around its fuel storage facility near Scudder Harbour.
“The Co-op plays an important, integral role in our community,” said Rick Masse, the mayor of Pelee Township and the designated spokesman for a group of concerned citizens that has launched an online fundraising campaign through Indiegogo.com. “It would be a tremendous loss for our community.”
The fundraising initiative has
already garnered the support — both financial and emotional — of award-winning author Margaret Atwood.
“Fingers crossed that beautiful #PeleeIsland will not be shut down by forced gov’t closure of its Coop,” Atwood tweeted Jan. 15.
Atwood and her partner Graeme Gibson have pledged $1,000 to the campaign that’s raised $5,500 in less than a week.
Atwood and Gibson have owned a home on the island since 1987.
“It’s a fine place to write,” Atwood wrote in a note of support for the Co-op on the Indiegogo page.
Atwood relayed a story about a time when she and Gibson spent a month on the island in early spring when the winter plane service had ended and the ferry service failed to start on time.
“We and everyone else on the island were stranded, and we were running out of food,” she wrote.
“I took to foraging, and was digging up young dandelion greens on the lawn when the vulture migration came through. The vultures settled into the trees around me and watched in an interested manner: when was I going to keel over? In our food-scarce condition, we did luckily have the Co-op. Things sold out quickly but luckily they had a large shipment of bananas just before transportation failed. We ate a lot of bananas, but at least we ate. People rely on the Co-op. It’s a crucial part of the island.”
Pelee Island has just slightly more than 200 year-round residents, although the population can grow to 900 during spring and summer.
“The Co-op is our lifeline,” said Anne Marie Fortner, who runs Explore Pelee, a transportation business on the island. “Living on an island, you can’t leave all the time. The Co-op is our gas, it’s our groceries, it’s our post office. It’s imperative that we make something work.”
The Co-op was established in 1916 to serve island residents and visitors and through the years the area on the north end of the island known as Scudder Harbour has been used as a ferry dock, grain elevator, freshwater fishery, fueldispensing facility and a marina.
All the industrial use contributed to grounds in the area becoming a contaminated brownfield.
According to the Indiegogo page, the Co-op has the only documented spill in the contaminated area, of 680 litres of diesel fuel. Supporters say the Co-op is being held responsible by the Environment Ministry for the contamination and cleanup of their property and surrounding properties.
In 2006, directors of the Co-op accepted responsibility and set about securing $800,000 in capital improvements to the fuel dispensing facility and another $250,000 for cleanup of the contaminated lands. Their efforts showed a 75 per cent improvement in the level of hydrocarbon contamination, until a fire at the Co-op in 2009 damaged the remediation equipment.
There was a three-year lag before contractors installed a new treatment system and by then hydrocarbon contamination had returned to original levels. Subsequent efforts failed to help and the contractor determined additional resources were needed to find the source of contamination.
With no progress in sight, the ministry ordered the Co-op to retain a new engineering firm to do a study and outline a plan of action. Originally, the ministry deadline for the study was November 2017.
“That area has been used as an industrial area for 100 years or more. I don’t think it’s appropriate,” Masse said of the Co-op shouldering all the blame. “I honestly believe the Coop tried really hard to remedy the situation but they’re tapped out. They can’t do it anymore.”
A spokesman for the ministry said studies indicate “there were a number of historical, unreported spills and leaks in fuel lines on the property dating back to the 1960s. The Co-op, as the current owner, is required to ensure that contaminants that might cause an adverse effect do not migrate off-site.”
Ministry spokesman Gary Wheeler said the ministry continues to work with the Co-op, the municipality and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing on how to address the issue.