Decontamination will take months
Cleanup to cost millions, and taxpayers may foot the bill, expert says
It will take months and cost millions of dollars to decontaminate a Pointe-Claire warehouse and yard of PCB-tainted soil, says a leading Quebec expert on cleaning up hazardous sites.
There are many steps involved in PCB decontamination and each step can take months, suggested Rosa Galvez-Cloutier, an environmental engineer and professor at Université Laval in Quebec City.
“This will definitely cost millions,” Galvez-Cloutier told The Gazette. “Decontaminating soil and hazardous substances is extremely expensive.”
On Wednesday, Quebec Environment Minister Yves-François Blanchet issued an ultimatum to Reliance Power Equipment: start cleaning up the illegally stockpiled electrical transformers and other PCB-tainted materials by the end of the day, or the government will seize the firm’s assets and carry out the decontamination itself.
The company has been storing transformers inside its warehouse and in a yard on Hymus Blvd. since 1998. On March 26, authorities became aware of a leak on the site of as much as 1,100 litres of oil and oily water with “significant concentrations” of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
Municipal officials discovered the spill after PCB-tainted oil was found in the sewer system as well as in Lac St-Louis.
The public was not informed of the spill for months even though a residential neighbourhood is located a few hundred feet from the yard.
“It shocks me that Environment Quebec did not reveal this situation earlier,” Galvez-Cloutier said.
The extent of the contamination is not fully known. However, on Aug. 4, an Environment Quebec inspector observed two reservoirs containing a total of 24,000 litres of transformer oil; five containers filled with soil contaminated with PCBs; a dozen barrels filled with PCB-tainted oil; 60 barrels in the warehouse filled with oil; and a tract of land contaminated with oil, according to a government document.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if this company declares bankruptcy over this,” Galvez-Cloutier said.
Under such a scenario, taxpayers would ultimately have to foot the bill.
The first step in decontamination would be to remove all the electrical equipment containing the PCBs, Galvez-Cloutier explained. The oil in those transformers would then have to be treated at a facility, with the decontamination costing several hundred dollars per litre.
Afterward, a company specializing in soil decontamination — of which there are about 20 in Quebec — would have to take soil samples to determine both the concentration of PCBs in the ground and the extent of the contamination. One of the big questions would be to find out whether any of the PCB-laced oil leached down to the water table.
Authorities would then have to excavate all the contaminated soil and replace it with clean earth. The tainted soil would be trucked to a fa-
“It shocks me that Environment Quebec did not reveal this situation earlier.”
ROSA GALVEZ-CLOUTIER
cility where it would be treated.
There are three treatment possibilities: biodegradation, which costs several hundred dollars per tonne and can take months; chemical oxidation, which is considerably more expensive and can take days; and incineration, costing up to $1,200 per tonne. The incineration would involve burning the PCB-laced oil at more than 1,200 C. If PCBs are improperly burned at lower temperatures, they can release cancer-causing dioxins and furans into the atmosphere.
It has been illegal to import, manufacture or sell PCBs in Canada since 1977. In 1988, an explosion and fire at a warehouse storing PCB-laced oil in St-Basile-le-Grand, south of Montreal, forced thousands of residents from their homes for days.