Environmental Dispute Resolution Fund: Application For Support

ENVIRONMENTAL DISPUTE RESOLUTION FUND

Application For Support

Date: June 3, 2007

Where the applicant is an organization, the name and position of the person authorized to act on behalf of the organization in relation to this application.

Name: Elizabeth Brach   
Position: Founding member of Powell River Legacy

• If you are an organization and have been awarded a grant, we normally send cheques to you after you have forwarded to us your lawyer’s invoice for legal services.  [Please note: if you are an individual, we normally send cheques directly to your lawyer after you have given us your approval for the payment.]  If a grant is made, to whom should the cheques be issued?
  
  Name as it should appear on cheque:

Send to Lawyer

• If you are an organization, please provide us with some background information on your mandate, objectives, and a brief outline of specific actions taken on your project to date.  If you are an individual, please provide us with some brief background on yourself and your property (if relevant).

In the second week of April, 2007 Catalyst Paper-Powell River Division hosted an Open House to present their plan to apply for a permit to exponentially expand their hazardous landfill site. This site is located in the Powell River Neighbourhood of Wildwood.  A week later over 40 residents met at a Wildwood Ratepayers meeting to vent their concerns about the impact this plan would have on their neighbourhood.  On April 23, 2007 Powell River Legacy formed to block Catalyst’s application to amend the existing landfill permit.  Knowing the impact was city wide, in less than two months Powell River Legacy has expanded from a neighbourhood group to a city-wide group. Catalyst has stated that they plan to submit the application on June 8, 2007.

Specific actions to date include:

1. Formation of an informative website: www.prlegacy.org containing much of what is listed in actions below.
2. Extensive letter writing campaign to governments and government agencies (MOE) and to Catalyst Paper.
3. Door to door petition signing in Wildwood and petitions placed in various local businesses (1500 signatures to date).
4. Online petition (1400 signatures to date).
5. Sign campaign in Wildwood.
6. Meeting with Nicolas Simons(MLA) on May 25th to voice our concerns and to present a copy of  petitions.
7. May 26th Rally Protest March (between 350 and 400 people attended) with speeches and invited politicians (only Green Party rep, Silvaine Zimmerman, attended). This ended with a march to the landfill site where we presented our petition to a representative from Catalyst.
8. Media Contact: Local newspaper and radio interviews, C.B.C. radio interview, CH T.V. interview, Edmonton, Alberta radio interview, a local video documentary about the landfill is being produced and will be completed within the next week, a one-page newspaper ad in the local paper is currently being designed.
9. Petition to the Auditor General is being prepared.
10. Membership in BCEN is being pursued.
11. Contact with Sierra Legal Fund, Greenpeace and WCEL.
12. Letters of support from local Sierra Club, Council of Canadians, Wildwood Ratepayers Group, and Cranberry Rate Payers Group.
13. Attempted to get support from local First Nations-Sliammon (unsuccessfully at this point).
14. Inadequacies of Golder Technical Report have been documented and sent to Catalyst Paper (Dr. Sarah Barkowski) and Ministry of Environment (Steffanie Warriner).

• Describe the nature of the environmental dispute.  This should include a description of the history of the dispute, the parties involved, the environmental significance for your site/region and any specific issues to be resolved.

This is a complicated case, but the basic dispute revolves around the amendment application that Catalyst Paper filing with the MOE on their permit for an industrial landfill located in Wildwood. Issues regarding groundwater contamination from the old, asphalt-capped landfill have also come to light. See below for details.

Catalyst is requesting an above-ground expansion of their present industrial waste landfill to create a huge mountain (15 acres in area by 66 feet high) of dioxin and furan containing fly ash in our residential neighborhood. The amendment application also requests other miscellaneous mill waste to be dumped there including asbestos and the demolition waste from the old kraft mill.

Furthermore, Catalyst is requesting a continued exemption of the 300 meter minimum set-back for landfills in residential neighbourhoods. There are 7 homes within 100 meters and another 97 homes and a coffee shop within the 300 meters of the landfill. An elementary school is situated just over 500 metres downwind of the landfill. We do not know the justification for the exemption as it has not been released. Our best guess is a “foot-in-the-door” argument since this landfill has been active on and off for the last 40+ years.

History: (Please see http://prlegacy.org/node/64 for the report complied in 1995 by a Greenpeace lawyer on details of the landfill infractions and MOE “interventions”.)

1) The original landfill was illegal (no permit). The permit to which this major amendment is being sought was first issued in 1976. Very toxic materials including PCBs and other organochlorines, demolition waste, lime dregs, bunker oil, etc were dumped prior to the permit issue. No accurate records were kept, but dioxin and furans in the leachate from this unlined landfill were recorded at levels as high as 26,000 pg/L.. The MOE placed a closure order on the landfill at one point in time, but the owners poked a bunch more monitoring wells and were allowed to cap the landfill, not remediate it. As it is unlined and lies over 4 perched aquifers in the sand/gravel/clay soils and over fractured bedrock and is still leaching dioxins, furans and other environmental toxins we are deeply concerned regarding the impact of placing over 1 million tons of fly ash on top of it. The mill has essentially created a dry space under the asphalt cap that has reduced leachate volumes; however the asphalt cap may crack (the Golder & Associates draft report confirms this possibility) under the weight of the fly ash mountain thus allowing water to again enter this area. This would increase the leachate contamination counts again.

2) The active 2.3 hec “mini-landfill” has an engineered liner and leachate collection system and is now being filled with fly ash and misc mill waste. This was an extension permitted in 1996 with the promise to residents that once it was full, it to would be capped and then the entire landfill area covered with soil and seeded. Both 1 and 2 are below ground-level landfills.

We have anecdotal accounts of the liner being punctured and blasting taking place in the underlying bedrock layer. Comparing rainfall calculations and leachate collection data, we are lead to believe that only a small portion of the contaminated water is being collected. The annual engineering reports (Golder and Associates 1995 & 1996) state that only 50% is being collected. The regional groundwater table lies under the landfill on top of the fractured bedrock layer and feeds both Powell Lake (our drinking water source) and Powell River. The mills filtration house data for river water shows contamination. We believe the leachate flowing into the 4 perched aquifers and the regional groundwater table and through the fracture bedrock is contaminating the river. Offsight contamination is not allowed under the permit.

3) The present application "amendment" is for a 66 feet (20 meter) high "vertical expansion" that will cover the 9 acre unlined, asphalt capped original landfill and the 6 acre lined mini landfill. This application was originally presented to the Wildwood Ratepayers Association in April 2006 as an extension of 4 to 5 years of the life of the landfill. That has now grown to an estimated 40-year increased life span.

Another major concern has to do with the structural stability of the “concretized” fly ash. The fly ash is being mixed with water into a slurry that sets-up to a hardness of “hard soil”. It is not concrete, nor as stable as concrete. It is abradable. No abradability studies have been done, nor according to Golder & Associates spoksperson Colin Wong contemplated. We are concerned that weather (rain, wind, sun drying and freeze/thaw) and equipment abrasion of the surface of the fly ash mountain will mean fly ash dust is blown into our environment. The dust contains silica, heavy  metals and dioxin/furans contaminants. Since our complaints regarding dust contamination sprinklers have been set up on the current landfill site. The weight (1.3 million tons) of this mountain is of concern as it sits on a slope above the Powell River Dam in an area assessed as a “seismic risk”. 

• What are your specific objectives in relation to the dispute?  You should take care to identify specific objectives that are environmental in nature.

Specific Objectives:

Prevent the Application Amendment from being granted on the basis of:

Require Catalyst to close and remediate the landfill site.

Find alternative uses for the fly ash.

It is a recyclable industrial waste. This means enforcement of the MOE mandate to recycle and reuse industrial waste. Other countries (notably Japan and India) have developed processes for decontaminating and re-using virtually all of their fly ash as a concrete additive. The mill has shown little interest in pursuing this alternative giving only lip service to it.

• Applicants are encouraged to pursue alternative dispute resolution before applying to the Fund.  This may include participation in planning and consultation processes, discussions with the relevant local and regional administration and politicians, mediation, and/or consensus-oriented negotiations.  Please describe any efforts you have made to resolve the dispute, whether or not they were successful, and give reasons for why you are applying to the EDRF for your project:
  
  

Public consultation on the amendment application has been severely curtailed by the new “policy” at MOE where stakeholders no longer sit at the table. Under the new policy, we can only express our concerns to Catalyst, wait for their response (to date no responses have been received) and then wait for the MOE to decide if our concerns have been “addressed”. The Wildwood Ratepayers Association has been involved in landfill discussions both at Catalyst-sponsored Stakeholder meetings and by attendance of Catalyst personnel at monthly ratepayer meetings. Catalyst is well aware of our concerns and generally brushes us off as “misinformed”.

Reasons for why we are applying to the EDRF for your project:
As residents of Powell River we feel very vulnerable to the potential catastrophic threat this landfill poses to the environment and to our health.  Our local government (municipal) is in business with Catalyst Paper and the Sliammon First Nations Group.  Our Town Council have made it very clear to us that they have no intention of getting involved in this issue. 

The Ministry of the Environment simply refers us back to Catalyst who they say is “responsible for resolving our concerns.” (See enclosed letter from MOE.) As someone aptly said in our group, “it is like asking the fox to look after the hens in the henhouse”.  We are concerned about the long term impact of this application as well.  Who will be there to monitor and pay for maintaining the integrity of this site in the years following the departure of Catalyst Paper?

Catalyst Paper is self-admittedly driven by its shareholders to increase the value of its shares.  Investing in a process to remediate the fly ash, to find a secure location to dump the fly ash or to recycle it as a useful product will cost more money than dumping it in our neighborhood. If you read the Technical Draft Report that Catalyst presented to us at their open house you will see many flaws in the science and adherence to regulations.  At this point it is called a “Draft”; without a final report we cannot dispute the report.

Finally, we are working people with limited time, resources and expertise to deal with this issue. We are doing everything we can at this point short of chaining ourselves to the gates of the landfill. How can we protect the environment and ourselves without the help of organizations like yours, and without the law? We implore you to help us.

• Provide the names and qualifications of any individuals to be hired (such as professional experts), where known.  If EDRF funded work will be carried out by individuals other than those named on the grant application, the applicant must notify the EDRF Liaison Lawyer and obtain prior approval for the change.  Failure to obtain approval for a change may result in non-payment of EDRF grant funds.

Once we hear from our lawyer, we can answer this section.

• The EDRF is designed to support applicants who would be unable to obtain legal support for their environmental projects without financial assistance, but who demonstrate a willingness to raise money and/or contribute some of their own resources, time and effort to the project.  In the lines below, please detail the amount you are able to contribute to this project, and your efforts to date to obtain funding from other sources.  Also note any in-kind contributions or work done on the environmental issue.  If you are unable to contribute the project, please provide information on your financial situation.

Powell River Legacy Members have donated over $1000 towards paying for a full-page ad in our local paper. Members have pledged another $1000 to put toward the EDRF. 

• Outline indications of political or financial support for the proposal.  If you have letters of support or news articles or media reports, please include a sample of them in your application to demonstrate to us the public interest benefit of the proposal.

1. Letters from Council of Canadians, Sierra Club, Wildwood Ratepayers, Cranberry Ratepayers
2. Letters to Editor
3. Rally newspaper story
4. Landfill fact sheet
5. Website: www.powellriverlegacy.org for audio-visual of interviews etc.
6. Letter from Environmental Protection Officer (MOE) Susan Woodbine

• If you are able to do so, please describe your time-line for the project:

June 8, 2007:  Catalyst Paper says they will submit application to MOE

• If a grant is made, should it be confidential?  If so, why?  You should be aware that general details of Fund grants are provided on a confidential basis to our funder, the Law Foundation of BC.

N/A-  Make it public!

• By signing your name below, the applicant or its authorized agent:
• Guarantees that all the information in this application is accurate;
• Commits to pay back to the Fund the proceeds of any cost award regarding the case, up to the amount of the grant; and,
• Recognizes and accepts that any grant given may be less than the amount requested and/or may be subject to such terms and conditions as the EDRF Committee or EDRF Liaison Lawyer may see fit.