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Ecowrappin'
Have a landfill/incinerator in your community? The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Tuesday, February 11, 2003
When a company calls itself ÑSafety KleenÑ and ÑClean HarborsÑ (note the U.S. spelling of harbours) you would expect the public to acquire a feeling of peaceful reassurance. This doesn't seem to be the case for some residents in Ontario's Lambton County or Ontario Liberal MPP Caroline DiCocco.Clean Harbors (formerly Safety Kleen, Laidlaw, Tricil, CIL) operates a hazardous waste landfill/incinerator and it has recently bid on the treatment of high profile waste sludge from the infamous Sydney, Nova Scotia tar ponds site. There will be somewhere around 3600 tons of sludge embedded in cement (called pretreated) shipped via 4 tandem truckloads per day for 30 days to Sarnia. This cemented sludge will be landfilled by Clean Harbors into their site in Lambton County. Although final tests for the chemical analysis of the sludge have not been completed, representatives of Clean Harbors believe that the composition and concentration of chemicals will fall within the permit issued by the Ministry of Environment and Energy in Ontario. Clean Harbors' permit does not allow them to accept PCBs. Lambton County, Sarnia and Chemical Valley is filled with large multinational companies some of whom have local hazardous sites, so why does this one seem to get more centred out than the rest?
Although they all employ local people and pay taxes, the other companies in Sarnia make materials that are used by consumers living in the community, products such as gasoline, other fuels, precursors for plastic products, vinyl siding, pipes for plumbing and solvents for household chemicals. These products are actually used by the locals before they end up in landfills, both municipal and hazardous waste landfills, such as Clean Harbors in Sarnia.
Clean Harbors, on the other hand, does not produce a product. Instead they receive the hazardous wastes (including the hazardous materials from those multinationals in Sarnia) from far, far away across North America, allowing other communities to say to themselves Ñthank god it becomes Lambton County's problemÑ. It's no wonder then that even names like ÑClean HarborsÑ or ÑSafety KleenÑ are not going to give neighbours a peaceful feeling.
When Exxon Valdez spilled oil along the Alaskan shoreline, destroying thousands of kilometres of wildlife habitat, the company was faced with irrate consumers who cut up their Exxon/Esso credit cards and boycotted products made by that company. Every company in chemical valley, except Clean Harbors, is affected by consumer confidence and pressure, especially when it is directed nationally and globally. In a hazardous waste industry there are no products to boycott or credit cards to cut up. In fact there is very little competition for Clean Harbors, as more and more landfills and incinerators are phased out. This makes it difficult for citizens to pressure companies like Clean Harbors to comply with community requests and demands.
There is one more huge stumbling block for citizens, North American Free Trade Agreement Chapter 11 (NAFTA). Under Chapter 11 of NAFTA, a multinational company can sue a government for legal expenses and loss of future income should the government prevent the corporation from doing business. If the provincial government, regardless of Liberal, NDP or Conservative persuasion, decided to prevent Clean Harbors from shipping the sludge to the Sarnia site, Clean Harbors could sue the province for all expenses plus loss of future revenue. To add salt to the wound, all taxpayers (including the neighbours who oppose the shipment of Sydney sludge) would have to dip into their wallets to compensate the very same multinational company for everything.
There are many precedents, one even local, for implementation of Chapter 11. In Sarnia, Ethyl Corporation was producing a gasoline additive called MMT, which the Canadian government had just banned. Since the American government allowed the production of MMT, Ethyl Canada claimed investment was being jeopardized in Canada and, consequently, sued the Canadian government for $300.million lost revenue. The Canadian government was forced to repeal their law banning MMT and award Ethyl an out of court settlement for approximately $20 million (Canadian), $13 million (US). This was our tax dollars at work. The most comparable example was a waste site case called Metalclad in Mexico. The web address below gives a very interesting outline of Metalclad case as well as NAFTA chapter 11.
GOTOBUTTON BM_1_ http://www.citizen.org/documents/ACF186.PDF
You can find this specific case on pages 26 to 30 of the 70 page acrobe document. Anyone who wants to understand how Chapter 11 of NAFTA impacts democracy and the toxic waste industry should read this document.
As long as the company operates within the boundaries of their permit authorized by the Ministry of Environment, there is nothing governments or communities can do to stop them. Even if companies violate their permit by exceeding their allowable limits, chances are that they'll get slapped with a fine and sent back to do business. Court cases and front page headlines are bad for consumer relations but the waste industry cannot be leveraged with consumer opinion since they do not sell a product which can be boycotted. Thanks to the legacy of Brian Mulroney and NAFTA, governments (and democracy as we know it) can only operate with the permission and blessing of not only companies like Clean Harbors but with the needed permission of every other multinational in North America.
It sounds hopeless. But that's not true. There are things that governments, the public and companies (if they volunteer to be good corporate citizens) can do. In my next article I will examine the positions of governments, corporations and citizens.
I encourage readers to write to the forum of this on-line paper and voice their opinions.
On a personal note, I would like to let the reader know that I do not belong to any political party (in fact I have never met or spoken to the MPP from Lambton Kent Middlesex), am not employed with or have ever received fees from political parties, chemical corporations or environmental groups.
Kris Lee is a high school science teacher in Wallaceburg, Ont. She is working hard to bridge the gap between industry and community, with a major goal of reducing harmful effects to the environment. For over 10 years Kris has been an active member of several national industry and government advisory panels.
