A Third Line Road homeowner has been asked to clean up contaminated soil on the property but has not yet complied, Six Nations Elected Council heard on Monday.
The landowner brought soil fill in to the property from the City of Vaughan and it was later discovered to have higher than provincially acceptable levels of benzene and pyrene.
But because there are no environmental by-laws here or ways to enforce them, it’s difficult to get a clean up order, according to Rod Whitlow, Six Nations Environmental Lead.
“Because there’s no federal environmental regulations that apply on reserve, we’re kind of at a disadvantage here in terms of making informed decisions about reducing exposure to some of these environmental contaminants.”
Whitlow said the Third Line contaminants are also called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and now, because it’s in the ground, they’re going to test wells down gradient from that soil site.
The testing is just part of Whitlow’s plan to test other contaminated water and soil sites on Six Nations as he seeks funding from a special federal program to conduct the tests.
“It’s a federal funding program looking at the ecological human health effects from exposure to environmental contaminants. You might recall that there had been quite a few community concerns over the past few years about soil contamination and water contamination so we did approach Health Canada.”
He said their current environmental monitoring program only focuses on well water.
“It does not include access to laboratory analysis to soil.”
He met with the contaminants lead for Health Canada in Ottawa and they suggested to access the funding with the proposal to cover some of the lab fees and water testing.
The application has been conditionally accepted, he said, and he anticipates the approval letter will come in before summer.
“The premise behind it is it’s going to provide us with some funding to do some soil and water testing using an accredited lab. We put in the proposal to select up to five sites. We know there’s no environmental regulations on Six Nations as is the case for all First Nations in Canada. The fact is, there’s some legacy contaminated sites or hazardous waste sites (on Six Nations) that people are aware of.
“So there’s a lot of concern,” he concluded. “There’s concern of pesticides and herbicides for the many agricultural farms we’ve come across in the community. We’re trying to figure out what we have to get in terms of ethics approval.”
He’s recruited a toxicologist from the University of Guelph who has agreed to assist as the principal investigator.
The title of the project is Delineation of Contaminated Sites Across the Community.
They will use a geographic information system (GIS) to select five sites.
“It won’t be a comprehensive environmental study,” said Whitlow. “This one is basically to demonstrate we know there are contaminated hot spots across the community. Some of them are buried, some of them came by way of atmosphere deposition.”
Anything coming from states on south side of Lake Erie could be transported and end up on Six Nations, said Whitlow.
The water and soil sampling will determine how far the contaminants have migrated.
They will also try to get more funding for more comprehensive testing.
When it comes to water, wells are generally unsafe on Six Nations because there are no policies to prevent them from being contaminated.
Whitlow said boil waters advisories help remove bacterial contaminants but not chemical contaminants.
The drinking water in private well systems is not suitable for drinking, he said.
“Because there’s no federal environmental regulations that apply on reserve, we’re kind of at a disadvantage here in terms of making informed decisions about reducing exposure to some of these environmental contaminants.”
Testing for contaminants isn’t cheap, either.
Some soil testing can cost around $25,000 for just five to six soil samples.
“They’re quite expensive,” said Whitlow.