Fish warnings promised
It has taken more than a decade, but warnings about heavily contaminated fish may finally be erected at Lake Niapenco in the Binbrook Conservation Area. That’s no help from either the City of Hamilton or the private operators of its airport who are apparently not cooperating with a federal pollution study along the Welland River which feeds the lake.
Persistent pressure by biologist Dr Joe Minor led the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority to invite the Arcadis federal consultants studying the extent of the contamination to make a public presentation at the NPCA’s September 16 board meeting. And that led several citizen board members to demand posting of clear fish consumption warnings, ones that do not assume all fishers are fluent in English and/or able to find and understand on-line provincial guidelines.
The provincial fish consumption guidelines for the PFOS pollution in the Welland watershed are also seriously out of date according to the federal consultants. They are recommending no more than 30% of those guidelines for the general population and 14% for children and pregnant women.
The source of the PFOS contamination is Hamilton’s airport, from foam used in fire fighting training that went on there for decades. The federal consultants are certain it occurred from 1984-1995 at one site, and possibly for 14 years earlier at another airport site. But they say they are having difficulty getting information from either the city or the airport operators.
“The work we are doing is just downstream of the airport,” explained the consultants. “The airport is owned by the city, and they are doing work on the airport itself which is the source of these impacts, and we haven’t had a lot of success in communicating with them in getting information about what they are doing.”
That news sparked questions from NPCA citizen board members. Thorold resident Malcolm Woodhouse asked for an explanation of this “wall of science” from Hamilton officials. The researchers replied that they were unsure why they were “getting a lot of runaround” over the last five months.
Grimsby citizen member Bruce Mackenzie got confirmation that the communication problem is with both the city of Hamilton and its airport managers, and suggested this might be connected to “liability concerns”. Since the contamination was made public in 2012, both these parties and the federal authorities have been arguing about who is responsible for the cleanup.
Other citizen members of the NPCA board pushed for appropriate warnings to people fishing in Lake Niapenco. Winona resident Stu Beattie wanted to know if Conservation Authority staff are testing fish or water at the popular reservoir. St. Catharines resident Ed Smith said he lives near the Martindale pond that is acknowledged to be toxic but has no warning signs.
“I still see newcomers to Canada walking away with buckets of fish and I have contacted Ministry staff who just point to their on-line fish consumption guidelines,” he said. “Please consider that it’s not just people who live along the waterway that are at risk.”
Smith “hit the nail on the head” with his comments, declared Mackenzie who agreed that the provincial Ministry is not taking responsibility for public warnings. He said the NPCA should have signs posted on its own properties like the Binbrook Conservation Area.
Subsequently, Dr Minor has been assured by NPCA staff that this notification is going to happen. Minor originally identified the source of the contamination for Environment Hamilton in 2011 – at that time the highest level ever recorded – by sampling a stream that runs under Airport Road.
