Bay View air quality: Dalton & Dave do diddly?

West End residents need to continue documenting and submitting air quality complaints and they also should be turning the screws on provincial officials for improvements, Sault MP Tony Martin and David Trowbridge told a community meeting last night.

Trowbridge is one of the authors of a Bay View air quality action report commissioned by Martin and released last night.

"The reality is that over the years people in this area have come to accept poor air quality," Martin said.

The MP told a small turnout at Bay View Public School that he's been hearing complaints about West End air quality since he began knocking on doors and campaigning in the last federal election.

Residents who did come out last night expressed great frustration about an apparent lack of response to complaints made in the past.

"We've been telling them about it for years but it isn't getting any better," said one man. "It's getting worse."

Referring to that man, another couple from the same neighbourhood said that he's dying of emphysema and his suffering is aggravated by bad air days from local industrial emissions.

"We can't afford to move away from here," said the man's wife. "In the East End our house would be worth about $150,000 right now. But here, we'll be lucky to get $50,000 for it."

Another neighbour said she worries about toxins falling to the ground and ending up in the soil.

"At least our children got out when we sent them to school out of town," she said. "We are glad they don't plan to come back."

Residents expressed anger about:

- Their failing health.

- The bad Bay View smell and noise that keeps them indoors with their windows closed.

- Their decks being dirty all the time.

- The apparent lack of response from agencies they thought were supposed to investigate complaints and enforce air quality infractions.

"It's almost as if the Ministry of the Environment works for local industry," said another woman. "It seems like they're only here for them."

Martin said that staff reductions at across the province have made it very difficult to get a environmental inspectors to the scene of a complaint in a timely way.

But the MP said he's willing to help document complaints.

He also suggested that people keep making written complaints to the MOE with copies sent to Martin, as well as to their MPP and local industries they believe may be the source of the noise or air pollution.

One problem outlined by Trowbridge in his presentation is a lack of independent monitoring in Bayview.

"Under current legislation, the MOE is only obligated to put air quality monitoring equipment in communities with populations greater than 100,000," said Trowbridge. "In Sault Ste. Marie, they turned over both stations to Algoma Steel Inc. to monitor and report on a voluntary basis."

One station Trowbridge referred to is located just outside the playground at William Merrifield School.

The other is on Bonnie Street.

As a result of meetings held in the West End since September 2004, the province spent $120,000 on monitoring equipment, but it decided to put that equipment up at Sault College because it would be more representative of the whole city, Trowbridge said.

He said there have been repeated incidents of measurements exceeding standards since the equipment was installed and this data has been submitted to the MOE.

"We are waiting for the results from this data," said Trowbridge. "But if they were that high up at Sault College I would be interested to know how high they were down here."

Martin is hoping to have some anectodal evidence of air quality problems to add to data from Sault College.

"The ideal thing that could come out of this meeting would be a community association that would take care of recording and submitting complaints," he said. "I would like to make sure that happens."

Trowbridge, also the vice-chair of Clean North, said that organization may have a role to play in assisting local residents to make complaints.

"The most important thing is that you document as much detail as possible," said Martin. "The date, time, where you were and what you smelled or saw as well as the impact it had on your life at the time."

"We have new owners at one local industry and we want to send a clear message right from the beginning," Trowbridge said. "We want them to know this isn't acceptable and that we will be doing something about it."

The report released last night is called Breathing Easy: A report on the potential for community cooperation in air quality issues in the Bayview area of Sault Ste. Marie.

Prepared by Trowbridge, Cecilia Fernandez and Anne O'Connor, it records air quality concerns raised by Bay View community members, identifies pollutants and their effects on human health, and outlines ways that all parties can work together.

Trowbridge and Martin agreed that the ideal solution would involve active and willing participation by residents, local industry and government of all levels.

The report says that Bay View residents have voiced their concerns for years, and that there's been independent validation of their stories.

However, little has been done to either improve air quality in the area or to warn residents when it's bad, it concludes.

Martin and provincial NDP candidate Jeff Arbus said they want independent air quality monitoring in the neighbourhood, and frequent, public reporting of air quality issues.

Trowbridge identified Algoma Steel Inc., Flakeboard Ltd., and St Marys Paper as the three most likely sources for certain problematic emissions in the area, but he said there are other emissions that seem to be coming from industrial areas far away or from other local sources such as automobiles and facilities that burn used oil to heat buildings.

Voluntary agreements such as the one Algoma Steel had with the MOE and Environment Canada up until December 31, 2005 could facilitate productive partnerships that protect the health of industry workers both on the job and at home, he said.

Martin said that air quality problems in Bay View have been adequately documented, so now it's time to act on them.

He called for more research into specific health problems that may have been caused by air pollution settling in Bay View and he's asked the Northern Ontario School of Medicine to take this on as a research project.

Martin also wants both federal and provincial 'right to know' legislation to put the responsibility on industry to tell people when they're breathing bad air and what's in it, similar to the legislation that obliges the City to tell people living downstream when there's an untreated sewage overflow into the river.

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