OHSWEKEN – On Thursday night, more than 120 Six Nations community members attended a public meeting organized by Six Nations Elected Council (SNEC) to discuss the results of tests made on the Kearns incinerator.
Kearns had long promised that his machine “disintegrated” waste with minimal emissions and was perfectly safe. However, concerns were raised by a large number of community members who reported disturbing smells, black smoke, and particulate matter coming from the machine during its six month run from November 15, 2013 until May 28, 2014 when it was shut down by protests from concerned community members.
The protests against Kearns led to the Six Nations Elected Council (SNEC) hiring Guelph based engineering firm RDWI, an external third party, to do a series of tests on the emissions coming from the exhaust stack over a three day period from November 4-6, 2014.
When results came back, they showed levels of particulate matter coming out of the machine were 85 times the allowable limits of Ontario guidelines. Dangerous heavy metals such as cadmium and lead showed up at over 25 times the maximum allowable limits. Most alarmingly levels of dioxins and furans, known carcinogens, were found in the test to be present at levels of up to 200 times the allowable limit.
When Two Row Times spoke to Kearns on January 20th 2015 about the test results, he suggested that the only way he could explain having numbers this high over the legal limits was due to a third party “sabotaging” his machine.
Kearns also told the Two Row Times that he’d knowingly run the machine without any pollution controls attached whatsoever. When asked why Kearns pointed the onus onto Six Nations Elected Council, saying, “…because they [SNEC] never gave us the go ahead to build the fixed facility. I wasn’t going to put $500,000 into a demonstration machine [for pollution controls] that was only there to demonstrate what it would do to the garbage. That’s reserved for the fixed facility that we will help them get approval from the ministry, but I also have to tell you when we talked about that they said, “oh we’re not having the ministry here and they’re not coming to our site” so it’s up to them.”
A handout from SNEC given at the meeting states that “the disintegrator equipment was fitted with a fabric-filter bag house during the test burn and stack, control was apparently insufficient for particular temperature. It is unknown if the bag filters were working optimally during the test.”
Apart from an opening and concluding statement, Chief Ava Hill did not speak at the meeting on Thursday night. Senior Administrative Officer Dayle Bomberry facilitated the meeting and dealt with questions from a frustrated crowd.
The meeting began with a presentation from RDWI engineers Kirk Easto and Mike Lepage. They presented a draft report on the testing and dispersion models they used when assessing Kearn’s machine and the distribution of contaminants in the surrounding community.
Easto stressed that the high level of toxic emissions were measured in the stack itself and “do not represent concentrations in the community of surrounding environment.” The dispersion models that RDWI used led them to state that “the maximum predicted concentrations of all modeled pollutants were below the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change limits. Thus no impact at the sensitive receptors [meaning residences, schools, daycares, etc.] is expected.”
According to a handout at the meeting from SNEC, the total cost for the emissions testing and dispersion modeling came to $60,000. Council provided Kearns with $805,000 to go towards the purchase of his technology.
The prevailing mood of those in attendance was highly critical of how SNEC has handled the issue of waste management in the community, and after the presentation, a seemingly unending stream of critical questions were asked of the engineers and SNEC representative Dayle Bomberry.
Community member Carrie Johnson lives on Fourth Line close to the dump and directed a question at Kirk Easto. “I’m a single mom with two kids. We get our drinking water out of my well on my property and in the summertime I supplement my family by growing a garden. My kids eat strawberries, corn on the cob, string beans. We eat from my garden right down the road from where the incinerator is…. Do you think I should be planting my garden next month?”
Easto replied that he was not a health expert, and that “all I am in an expert in is measuring what’s in that stack.”
Johnson followed up by asking both engineers if they would come to her house this summer and eat food grown from her garden.
Although clearly uncomfortable with this line of questioning, both Easto and Lepage confirmed that they would indeed come over for dinner at Johnson’s place and that they would take back some of the vegetables grown in her garden for their family.
The larger question of how to deal with Six Nations’ continuing waste crisis remained unresolved, although many in the crowd expressed support for recycling programs and efforts to divert waste from a dump which is already well past capacity.
