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By Carol Martin
SooToday.com
Friday, July 07, 2006
Three boatloads of politicians, government officials and media representatives went out on the St. Mary's River yesterday to investigate complaints that less-than-nice Canadian stuff has been floating up on the Sugar Island shoreline. Congressman Bart Stupak and State Representative Gary McDowell brought a few of their people over to hop on a boat.
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Also over from the American side of 'the ditch', as the St. Mary's River is affectionately called in these parts, was Cathy Abramson of the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians.
From this side, Sault MP Tony Martin was joined by Sault MPP David Orazietti's right-hand man Carmine Biasucci and Rod Stewart from the Ministry of the Environment.
Joe Fratesi, the City's chief administrative officer and City Engineer Don Elliot were also on the OPP boat.
Congressman Stupak and Representative McDowell said their investigation indicated that Sault Ste. Marie Ontario's East End Water Pollution Control Plant is the source of the very obviously human waste that Sugar Island residents complain has been washing up on their beaches recently.
Tony Martin's office arranged the boat tour around the East End Water Pollution Control Plant, Sugar Island and other points of interest to try to sniff out the source of the offensive matter.
After the tour. everybody went over to City Hall to talk about what they saw and what they were going to do about it.
Donald Marles, chair of the St. Mary's River Binational Public Advisory Council was one of the people in the closed room.
Later, Marles told SooToday.com he believes that the folks on Sugar Island are finding sediment from the bottom of the river on their beaches.
"There is no way it could have come out of the water pollution control plant in the East End," he said. "Nothing like what they say they found on that shoreline could have fit through those pipes."
Marles, an environmentalist who has been working to restore the St. Mary's River since 1977, said that low water levels on the river have made the sediment especially vulnerable to disturbances.
The current drought has left the river lower than Marles has ever seen it and he has long predicted sediment would be disturbed and people would find it on shore if water levels continued to drop.
Marles believes his prediction is now coming to pass and hopes that the Binational Public Advisory Council's recommendations for sediment management for the St. Mary's River will be carried out.
The advisory council's plan was also referred to in an International Joint Commission (IJC) assessment that Martin, Stupak and McDowley were waving around on the steps of City Hall after their boat ride yesterday.
The three politicians pledged to bring those recommendations back to their governments and try to get the St. Mary's River cleaned up, no matter where the poop is coming from.
The lead author of the St. Mary's River Area of Concern Status Assessment was also in one of the boats yesterday.
Bruce Kirschner, an environmental scientist from the IJC, said he was glad to see the assessment that had been originally released in 1999 was so prominent at yesterday's deliberations.
MPP Martin and Congressman Stupak both agreed that the joint commission's plan to restore the St. Mary's River has been shelved for too long and this would be a good opportunity to dust it off and take another crack at it.
That assessment says Bellevue Marine Park, where the boats launched from yesterday, has an especially nasty and large glob of sediment on its bottom.
"[The area] is still significantly contaminated with metals, oil and grease, total petroleum hydrocarbons, PAHs and nutrients," said the assessment. "The discharges noted above contribute to concerns regarding impacts on aquatic life and human health."
The assessment also stated that contaminant concentrations generally diminished between 1987 (when data was first collected on that area) and 1995 (the time of the last survey), but not to acceptable levels.
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the St. Mary's River continues to be an area of concern, especially regarding the sediment on the river bottom.
"Severe impairment of water quality, sediment, and biota remain on the Ontario shoreline due to major point source discharges; sediments became contaminated with arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, cyanide and lead," the EPA says on its website.
"Contaminants of concern include oils and greases, suspended solids, metals, phenols, ammonia, bacteria, and PAHs," the agency added. "Sources contributing to the use impairments include Algoma Steel, two Ontario water pollution control plants, St. Mary's Paper, and three Ontario tributaries."
As recently as 2004, Michigan's Department of Community Health has issued a fish advisory for the St. Mary's river warning women and children not to eat excessive amounts of large pike, walleye (pickerel) and carp because those fish may contain dangerous levels of PCBs and/or mercury.
The 2005 - 2006 Guide to Eating Ontario Sport Fish recommends that chinook salmon from the St. Mary's River not be consumed.
The joint commission assessment also highlighted steps already taken to restore the St. Mary's River by Algoma Steel Corp. and St. Mary's Paper Co., as well as many levels of government on both sides of the river.
The full text of that assessment can be found here.
The following statement was issued today by Congressman Stupak:
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Stupak tours St. Mary's River, meets with Canadian officials on sewage discharge issue
(SAULT ST. MARIE, ON) - U.S. Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Menominee) toured areas of the St. Mary's River affected by a recent discharge of sewage that is believed to be from a waste treatment facility in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
Stupak also visited the property of residents of Sugar Island, Michigan, where human sewage has washed up from the St. Mary's River onto the beach.
While on Sugar Island, Stupak said chunks of human feces were readily visible on the shore.
"This confirms what I previously heard from my constituents," Stupak said. "It is clear to any objective observer that human sewage is flowing into the St. Mary's River and onto Sugar Island. This is a severe problem that needs a rapid and thorough solution."
After touring the sewage affected areas of the river, Stupak convened a closed-door session with a Canadian Member of Parliament and other officials from both sides of the border to discuss resolution of the issue.
Stupak said that during the meeting he urged better communication between American and Canadian officials, the development of standards to ensure a better exchange of information and that prior notice be given before future discharges from the Ontario wastewater facility.
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