MONTREAL – Quebec’s Environment Minister was in Pointe-Claire on Tuesday morning at the site of a recent PCB spill.
Environment Minister Yves-François Blanchet and a team of ministry specialists were at Reliance Power Equipment property to arrange for the provincial take over of on-site clean up.
In March, more than 1,000 litres of oil and liquid with a high concentration of PCBs leaked at the property.
READ MORE: What are PCBs?
Although Reliance Power Equipment had been given several notices of non-compliance from the environment ministry, the company had not yet cleaned up or removed the hazardous materials.
The Environment Minister confirmed that the Ministry of Sustainable Development, Environment, Wildlife and Parks would be taking over the clean up operations.
“The first phases involved in securing the area were both simple and quite urgent,” Blanchet noted in a statement.
“However, Reliance failed in its obligations with respect to the first deadline. From now on, the environment and safety must be taken seriously.”
The minister said that measures were being taken in order to proceed quickly and companies have already been hired to begin work.
Repairs to the fence and additional security measures on site are expected to begin Tuesday.
Officials confirmed that Reliance will be required to reimburse all costs borne by the government.
“We have also begun procedures to take out a legal mortgage on the company’s assets,” said the Blanchet.
“If Quebecers are forced to bear part of the burden for this, it will be as little as possible.”
The company is owned by an 83-year-old woman who inherited it from her husband when he died.
She hired a consultant to help with the disposal and clean up of the hazardous materials.
“My mandate was basically to help the company get to a point where it could clean up,” the company’s former consultant, Harry Baikowitz, told Global News on Monday.
“When they told us Thursday night that it would cost $7-8 million to do it, I had to tell my client. My client told me that they don’t have the money.”
The original estimate for the clean up costs was projected to be $2-4 million.
“What’s changed is the cost of remediation, not the physical work, but to send the various products to various places,” said Baikowitz.
“For instance, the carcasses of the transformers have to go to Ontario, the contaminated oil has to go to Swan Lake and the soil has to go a place in Quebec, and the costs have just risen tremendously.”
He noted that his former client was committed to cleaning up the site.
“My client was a very good corporate citizen, they wanted to clean it up,” he said.
“They were prepared to sell the property and use proceeds of that sale to clean it up; but the property doesn’t have that much value, even if it is cleaned up.”
Comments