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 reduxzero
  
Location: Edmonton, AB
Gender: Male
 |  |  | A toxic legacy in the heart of the wilderness
< on 11/24/2005 11:20 PM >
|  | | | Article spotted completely by chance in the Globe and Mail:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051121/WINISK21/TPNational/?query=Wi nisk
Full text, in case the story is taken offline:
A toxic legacy in the heart of the wilderness
As authorities fight over cleanup costs, pollutants from a long-abandoned military base seep into Ontario's North
By JULIUS STRAUSS
Monday, November 21, 2005 Page A7
WINNIPEG -- The abandoned buildings are still standing but the windows have long been smashed. In the frigid cavernous interiors, the wind scatters pads of deadly asbestos lying on the chipped concrete floor.
Outside, lie rusting hulks that were once diggers and trucks, their paint peeling and toxic chemicals from their batteries and ancient radiators seeping into the fragile permafrost.
Nearby, stands a small mountain of rusted metal drums. Locals say there are as many as 10,000 of them scattered throughout the area and hundreds more lie at the bottom of a small pond nearby.
This is Winisk -- a former Royal Canadian Air Force radar base nestled on the edge of Northern Ontario's Polar Bear Provincial Park on Hudson Bay, one of the most pristine wilderness areas left on earth.
Abandoned by the military 40 years ago, this toxic wasteland has been left to rot, its chemicals leaking into the ground, as federal and provincial authorities bicker over who should pay for a cleanup.
The ruins of the base are not only unsightly, they are also potentially lethal.
Locals say the pollutants have seeped into the water table and contaminated the animals that live in the area -- polar bears, caribou and many rare species of birds.
Several members of the Winisk First Nation, who grew up near the base and return to the area to hunt each spring and autumn, report an increasing incidence of lung diseases. They believe their problems are the result of prolonged exposure to asbestos used for fire-proofing in the walls of the buildings and cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) used in transformers and radars.
Whatever the science -- and no studies have been carried out to determine the effect of the pollution on the health of the natives here -- the Winisk First Nation is furious with federal authorities.
They say that while the government has been embarrassed by revelations that they were providing contaminated water to the reserve at Kashechewan, there are a plethora of other abuses in the area that have been covered up or ignored.
George Hunter, a former chief of the Winisk First Nation who grew up on the far bank of the small estuary before his community was flooded and relocated upstream in 1986, still hunts regularly in this area.
"If this had been in the south, there would have been protests," he said. "There's no way this could have lasted 40 years. "It seems the military has all the engineers it wants when it comes to putting something up but none for cleaning up the mess they leave behind."
The military complex at Winisk was built in the 1950s at the height of the Cold War as part of the Mid Canada Line -- a lattice of listening stations designed to warn of an attack on North America by Soviet aircraft. Dozens more bases were built across northern Canada, stretching from British Columbia to Newfoundland. The total cost at the time amounted to more than $220-million. Within a few years, technological improvements meant the entire network had to be scrapped.
In 1964 and 1965, the Department of National Defence closed down the bases and began building the Pinetree Line, another early warning system further to the south.
Many of the Mid Canada Line bases were later cleaned up after agreements between the military and the provinces.
But at Winisk and several other bases at the far reaches of Northern Ontario and hundreds of kilometres from the nearest large town or asphalt road, no deal was ever struck and to this day no cleanup operation has been mounted.
Today what is left of the Winisk radar base, 1,300 kilometres north of Toronto, is only accessible by small boat, snowmobile or helicopter.
The indifference displayed by the military when they departed four decades ago is in clear evidence.
Near the mile-long runway -- on which locals say maintenance crews poured diesel to keep down the dust in the summer months -- more than a dozen broken and abandoned trucks and diggers dating back to the 1950s and 1960s lie.
One has rusty pedals, broken glass and a smashed dashboard. Another has a fading emblem, "Royal Canadian Air Force" written on the side, and the serial number 538B45-1013. Nearby, three car batteries are leaking their contents.
In the hangar, patches of asbestos fibre lie on the floor. In some of the interior rooms, the ceilings have collapsed, exposing wads of insulation.
"We used to call this place the land of berry-picking," Mr. Hunter said sadly as he stood on top of a huge pile of rusting barrels. "We can't even drink the water -- we don't know what's in it. The ponds look good but you jump in them and your hair becomes as stiff as wire."
Even this depressing vista may not represent the full scale of the ecological disaster at Winisk.
Natives who worked at the site tell how work crews were ordered by the military to dig huge pits and dump machinery they no longer needed inside. Then the pits were covered over.
Mike Peechapman, 75, who worked at the base as a manual labourer, said: "When the military left, they buried furniture, bed frames, new tools and even whole trucks. They also buried lots of fuel drums."
Seventy-year-old Mike Hunter, George Hunter's father, worked at the base as a bus driver. "In the autumn of 1958, they buried all their construction vehicles there," he said. "As for all the pesticides that were kept there, we never found out what happened to them. We're not only talking about PCBs, but also asbestos, lead, DDT and other chemicals. When we asked about it, they said it was top secret."
Winisk is not the only former radar base in Northern Ontario with severe ecological problems. Base 415 at Cape Henrietta Maria, deep in the Polar Bear Provincial Park, was also part of the Mid Canada Line.
An environmental study commissioned in the 1990s by the Mushkegowuk Council, an umbrella group for many of the native groups in the area, found asbestos, PCBs and other pollutants at the site. The study also found evidence that a large above-ground storage tank was still leaking diesel fuel into the tundra.
Another study shows that a third former site, known as 06 and located between Moosonee and Cochrane, is also badly contaminated.
In the late 1990s, the Department of National Defence even commissioned its own report into the ecological damage at the former bases, which was carried out by the environmental services group, an arm of the military. The study, which has been seen by The Globe and Mail, concluded that Winisk, Cape Henrietta Maria and several other bases were contaminated and needed to be cleaned up.
Among the problems itemized were the presence of PCBs, asbestos, pesticides and heavy metals.
"Contaminants must be prevented from further migration into the food chain," the report concluded.
Even so, and despite requests from native groups, the Department of National Defence refused to accept any responsibility for the toxic legacy at Winisk or the other bases. It argued that the land on which the bases were built belonged to the province.
To date, the only former Mid Canada Line base in the area that has been cleaned up was at Fort Albany, a reserve near Kashechewan on James Bay.
In 2001, the province, failing to reach agreement with Ottawa, went ahead unilaterally with a cleanup of the site at a cost of $14-million.
Michael Cartan, a regional official with the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources, said: "There was an urgent need to act because this site was right in the community." The cleanup at Fort Albany coincided with a study carried out between 1999 and 2001 on the reserve by Evert Nieboer of the Department of Biochemistry at McMaster University in Hamilton.
Published by Health Canada, the report concluded that almost all the local people had unnaturally high levels of PCBs and DDT derivatives in their blood.
The province has since stepped up efforts to persuade Ottawa to meet some of the estimated $60-million cost of cleaning up all the former Mid Canada Line bases in Northern Ontario.
In March, David Ramsay, Ontario's Minister for Natural Resources, wrote to the federal government, requesting a new meeting to discuss the cleanup of the old radar sites. For months, there was no reply, but finally in October -- possibly spurred into action by the scandal at Kashechewan -- federal officials agreed to a Nov. 1 meeting in Toronto with their provincial counterparts.
Mr. Ramsay said after the meeting that he hoped to have an answer from federal authorities during the next eight weeks.
Lisa Brooks, a spokesperson for the Department of National Defence contacted last week, said that consultations are ongoing but could give no timetable for an outcome. "More discussions will be needed before a decision can be made," she said.
For some of the elders at the Winisk First Nation, a cleanup, even if it comes soon, may be too late.
Mike Hunter, who spent years working at the site and has returned to the area each spring and autumn to go hunting, has ever-worsening asthma.
Mr. Peechapman can only breathe with the frequent help of an inhaler. His wife Elizabeth, 73, who worked as a cook at the site, has spent the past 15 months lying in a hospital bed in Moose Factory, kept alive only by oxygen.
Mr. Peechapman said: "I went to see my wife two weeks ago. She's near the end now, always dozing off. The doctors say they can't help her any more.
"I used to be so proud and happy with my job there. But we never knew about the contamination. We never knew it would come to this."
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There's a remote chance any of you have been here, but it's something to keep in mind should you ever visit the far-flung northern areas of the province.
reduxzero - DrainsofmyCity |
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fedge
  
Location: Gaud Corners, Ontario, Canada
Gender: Male
you blight up my life™®
| | | Re: A toxic legacy in the heart of the wilderness
<Reply # 1 on 11/25/2005 1:45 AM >
| | | | This is a shame, courtesy of our government. I almost got a job in Nunavut and one of the things I learned about were many abandoned USAF bases in the Territories, which also have been "forgotten" in terms of a proper cleanup. And of course, the losers are the poorest, who now have to live with illness and tainted environment.
18-odd Years Of UER-ing! |
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oldtimer
Location: Toronto
Gender: Male
| | Re: A toxic legacy in the heart of the wilderness
<Reply # 2 on 11/25/2005 2:12 AM >
| | | | I think I found the mile-long runway mentioned.
link
Set your GPS waypoint to
lat 55.237050
lon -85.110569
We'll meet up at the usual Timmie's for a monster upsized coffee to go...
1300 kilometers north of Toronto? I think it's someone else's turn to pay for gas.
[last edit 11/25/2005 2:14 AM by oldtimer - edited 1 times]
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fedge
Location: Gaud Corners, Ontario, Canada
Gender: Male
you blight up my life™®
| | | Re: A toxic legacy in the heart of the wilderness
<Reply # 3 on 11/25/2005 2:53 AM >
| | | | ...other ways Canada's northerners have been made to suffer:
A shameful Canadian legacy by Greg Weston
For four days and nights, a small army of attorneys virtually barricaded themselves in the 27th-floor boardroom of a Toronto law firm, determined to negotiate an end to one of the most shameful chapters in Canada's history.
Finally, last Saturday afternoon, a deal was inked to provide up to $3 billion in mainly federal compensation to the former students of Indian residential schools.
Among all of Canada's many misguided exercises in social engineering, probably none did so much harm to so many children as did the church-run hell-holes for native kids.
For almost a century, native children were taken from their villages with the blessing of the federal government, to be raised in church-run schools, far from home for years.
By the time the last of these wretched institutions was shut down in the early 1970s, their legacy of cultural annihilation, physical beatings and horrendous sexual abuse was etched in the ruined lives of generations of aboriginal people across the country.
Over the past decade, a wave of victim lawsuits began to swamp the federal government and the various churches involved in this sorry saga.
In response, successive Liberal administrations have poured close to $1 billion down the drain just in the past nine years, most of it on lawyers and bureaucracy, and relatively little on actual compensation.
Finally, a $12-billion class-action lawsuit against the feds last year pushed all parties to the bargaining table, and ultimately to a deal.
It is pure coincidence, of course, that the agreement struck last weekend comes on the eve of both a federal election and today's aboriginal summit of first ministers in B.C.
The deal means Paul Martin will arrive at today's gathering in Kelowna to thundering approval from native leaders (even before he drops what is expected to be another $4 billion in their laps for other aboriginal programs).
Under the agreement, the federal government will provide a total of about $1.9 billion in compensation to the estimated 80,000 former residential school victims who are still alive.
This is not an issue of physical or sexual abuse -- everyone who attended a residential school will get a government cheque averaging $24,000. No questions asked.
In addition, the deal allows those who do have claims of abuse to collect their $24,000 and still go after the feds for additional compensation for their suffering at the hands of school pedophiles.
Government officials admit they have no idea how much all that could cost taxpayers, but one lawyer involved in the agreement estimates the additional tab could hit $1 billion.
And what of the churches responsible for the offending pedophiles and other serial abusers?
One Supreme Court ruling established that the churches should bear about a quarter of the liability in residential school abuse cases -- a bill that could easily have topped $500 million.
But under the deal struck over the weekend, the government is agreeing to protect the churches from all ongoing and future legal actions by abuse victims.
In return, government officials say the Anglican church has agreed to chip in about $25 million, and the Presbyterians about $3 million.
But it is the Catholic church which got the heavenly part of this deal.
Having run almost 70% of the residential schools at issue, Catholic organizations could have been on the hook for at least $350 million of the latest deal.
Instead, under the agreement, the church has to provide $25 million of "in-kind" services for aboriginal healing, and has agreed to try to raise another $25 million for "reconciliation" programs.
Finally, the 41 Catholic groups involved in the deal have also pledged $29 million to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation "as it may be requested."
The foundation is one of the dozen secretive money pits created by the Liberals beyond the prying eyes of access to information laws and even the auditor general.
Oh, I almost forgot the lawyers.
The government has agreed to pay the lawyers for the aboriginal school victims a cool $80 million. |
http://torontosun....11/24/1320385.html
18-odd Years Of UER-ing! |
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~pandora~
 
Location: guelph/toronto
Gender: Female
| | Re: A toxic legacy in the heart of the wilderness
<Reply # 4 on 11/25/2005 4:02 AM >
|  | | | I have read the odd newspaper article on priests found guilty on child molestation and other such charges, and how the churches swear it to be an isolated incident. This would be understandable, until you look at something like this. Tens of thousands of children assaulted and sexually abused by priests and other people affiliated with the church. Its disgusting, and there is no cover up or explanation for it; not to mention the fact that all of this went on right under our government's nose.
Aren't churches supposed to be leading the people toward some kind of 'holy understanding' or something? and isn't the government supposed to stand for the people?
It really makes you think...
p.s. the government expects us to trust them enoguh to tell us what is right and wrong, in order to protect our 'safety' (like no tresspassing in abandoned buildings)...ha...they just don't want us getting injuries that might require us to use medicare (and government money)
[last edit 11/25/2005 4:13 AM by ~pandora~ - edited 1 times]
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Phantom403
Gender: Male
MOOOO!
| | Re: A toxic legacy in the heart of the wilderness
<Reply # 5 on 11/25/2005 3:55 PM >
| | | | Believe me....speaking as the voice of first hand experience, rules for north and south are completely different. I've explored several abandoned mine sites just north of where I grew up. You would never believe the mess that was left behind and allowed to fester. It's funny the number of people from my home town that either have or have passed on from cancer. Funny the amount of mental illness and the high rate of suicides. Definitely not ha ha funny...but definitely you gotta wonder at the co-incidence funny. I can very vividly recall snowmobiling to an abandoned mine site...-45 before windchill...and coming across one of many acid lakes. The trees would be completely dead for about 1/4 of a mile all around it, and you only make the mistake once of trying to cross it. It doesn't freeze and you end up with a 10 foot rooster tail of green sludge flying behind your sled. Then less than a week later your driving along and the track disintegrates on ya blowing rubber and steel everywhere. Best part is, the town is in a valley, and this toxic stew sits right above the main lake where the drinking water comes from up in the hills. However, we're told they've dumped lots of lime into the lake to balance things out. I couldn't imagine if a lake like this sat above any city in Southern Ontario.
There was a demonstration that almost happened a few years back, that really saddened me that it never happened thanx to either a lack of organization or the folks at U-haul suddenly running out of trucks. A few years back some bleeding hearts decided it was mean to have a spring bear hunt and cancelled it. Now the bear population in the north has exploded. It's so common to see some poor drunk walking home at 2 am, on one side of the street and a bear passing him on the other. Heck I even recall one of my best friends in highschool at a party, totaly wasted, taking a piss out back, petting his black labrador and telling him what a good dog he was. Mean time his dog was sleeping at my feet under the table. *giggles* Took several minutes to convince him to come in and leave the "big" puppy alone. It's a miracle nobody has been killed in recent memory. Anywho, a few very pissed off town folk were going to rent a big-ass u-haul, trap a dozen or so bears and drive them right down to ottawa and set them free on parliament hill. Still cracks me up thinking of Jean waking up one morning and saying...maudis....honey come here der is dis big BIG black dog in our garbage get me da broom eh?!
Anywho...enough bable for now....
Phantom403
The problem with the world is dumb people. I'm not advocating capital punishment for dumb people. I'm just suggesting we remove all the warning labels and let the problem solve itself. |
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Dark Shadow
Noble Donor
Location: London Ontario
Gender: Male
M.E.C.C.A Member
| | | Re: A toxic legacy in the heart of the wilderness
<Reply # 6 on 11/25/2005 5:36 PM >
| | | | WOW!!, Talk about diarrhea at the mouth..was this going somewhere? ~giggles~ 
~If electricity comes from electrons, does that mean that morality comes from morons?~ |
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Phantom403
Gender: Male
MOOOO!
| | Re: A toxic legacy in the heart of the wilderness
<Reply # 7 on 11/25/2005 5:52 PM >
| | | | Yup....looks like it went straight to your ass...OMG!!
The problem with the world is dumb people. I'm not advocating capital punishment for dumb people. I'm just suggesting we remove all the warning labels and let the problem solve itself. |
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Mutt
Moderator
Location: Bunbury, Western Australia
Support your local Funeral Director ----- Drop Dead!
| | | Re: A toxic legacy in the heart of the wilderness
<Reply # 8 on 11/25/2005 10:05 PM >
| | | | Here's a site with images of the remains of the base.
http://www.lswilson.ca/scs500.ht
This base was part of the MCL, Mid Canada Line. http://www.lswilson.ca/mcl.htm
Similar to the Pinetree line setups (foymount, Edgar etc) but used Doppler radar. Most closed down towards the end of the Cold War era. Minish closed in 1965.
Probably neat places to look around if you can get to them. I think we'll have to wait for Oldtimer to get up the gas money to go.
Bring a chainsaw with you oldtimer, I dont think many of these locales are accessible by commonly travelled roads.
All men are cremated equal. |
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