PROVINCE TAKES OVER PCB CLEANUP
COMPANY FAILED TO MEET OBLIGATIONS
Pointe-Claire Mayor Bill McMurchie, centre, tours Reliance Power Equipment on Hymus Blvd. where PCBs have been stored illegally for more than a decade. The province announced Tuesday it is stepping in to secure the site and start cleanup operations within 48 hours.
Quebec’s Environment Department is stepping in after a Pointe-Claire company failed to ensure PCBs illegally stored on its property are being held safely.
Environment Minister Yves-François Blanchet said Tuesday that the provincial government will secure the warehouse facility, owned by Reliance Power Equipment Ltd., and — over the next 48 hours — begin plans to dispose of thousands of litres of PCB-contaminated oil to a special facility in Swan Hills, Alta.
Blanchet said provincial inspectors visited the Hymus Blvd. company last weekend and determined that nothing had been done since Reliance submitted to the provincial government on Aug. 30 its plan to clean up the PCB-contaminated waste it had been storing illegally for more than a decade.
The provincial government had given the company a Sept. 13 deadline to secure the toxic waste.
“The site was not even locked, anyone could have entered,” Blanchet said. “Therefore, as of now, we are taking control of the site to assure it is locked, secure and decontaminated.”
“I’m saying this once more, the company had the obligation to secure the site and decontaminate, and many of the obligations were not respected.”
Security fencing and camera surveillance equipment will be installed immediately, Blanchet said Tuesday morning, standing in front of the building near a chainlink fence that separates the company’s yard f rom the street.
Blanchet estimated the cleanup cost at about $3.5 million, but noted that costs may increase once provincial officials evaluate the full extent of the work, including the removal of a yet-to-be-determined amount of contaminated soil to another disposal company.
Blanchet said the Quebec government will place a lien on the building and assets of Reliance, but admitted he was “not very confident,” the government “will get all the money back.”
On Monday, Harry Baikowitz, a Montreal chemist Reliance hired as a consultant, said the firm obtained cost estimates last Thursday that pegged the decontamination of the site at between $7 million and $8 million. The estimates covered the removal of PCB-contaminated oil to Alberta, the disposal of electrical transformers to a scrapyard in Ontario and the removal and transport of contaminated soil to a Quebec City company.
Baikowitz said he instructed Birdie Marshall — the 83-year-old woman who has been at the head of the company since her husband, Max Marshall, died in 2002 — to send a registered letter to the provincial government if the company does not have sufficient funds to carry out the work.
On Tuesday, Pointe-Claire Mayor Bill McMurchie said he was pleased that the cleanup is no longer in the hands of Reliance, a company with which the city has had a contentious history, including a long legal battle.
“The file today is where the file should be — it’s in the minister’s hands,” said McMurchie, standing alongside Blanchet throughout the news conference.
McMurchie said Pointe- Claire citizens, especially those living in the immediate vicinity of Reliance, have been concerned since the illegal stockpile of PCBs became public knowledge late last month.
Neither Blanchet nor McMurchie would comment on how thousands of litres of illegal PCB-contaminated oil had been left to languish for more than a decade in an unsecure site in an industrial park near suburban homes, daycares and schools, and how nothing had been done about it by provincial and municipal government officials.
Blanchet said questions about existing government regulations, both municipal and provincial, remain part of the ongoing investigation, as do questions about Reliance’s culpability and that of any companies that may be implicated as having used Reliance as an illegal dumping site for toxic waste.
Criminal charges remain a possibility, Blanchet said.
“I don’t believe there was any malice,” Blanchet said of Reliance officials, but, added “that does not prevent somebody from being held responsible in front of the law.”