Inco to replace Port Colborne soil

Following administrative action by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment (MOE), Inco (N-T) has launched a program to replace nickel-contaminated soils on residential properties near its old refinery in Port Colborne, Ont.

In late March, the ministry issued a “draft remediation order” against 16 properties in the southern part of the city, north and east of the old Inco plant. The order requires Inco to develop a remediation plan for the properties and have its consultants sample properties north of the area the MOE has already studied.

A June 2000 study by the MOE sampled soils on 179 residential properties. Of those, 16 properties on Rodney, Mitchell and Davis Streets had surface soils with concentrations of nickel greater than 1%, whereas 10 properties had more than 0.1% lead in soils within 0.3 metre of the surface.

The average nickel content of 1,300 soil samples was 0.25%, about 40 times the typical concentration of nickel in Ontario soils. The province set a guideline of 0.02% nickel in soils in 1989, based on the metal’s toxicity to plants. Human-health effects would not show up at the guideline levels.

The MOE concluded that high nickel concentrations were “unquestionably related to Inco,” blaming emissions from vents, windows and doors of the plant, most of which would have taken place before the construction of a stack at the plant in 1929. Inco disputes that conclusion, arguing that the high concentrations of nickel could have resulted from importation of fill soils to the sites.

The study concluded that lead concentrations on the properties were not from the Inco plant (which had never refined lead or lead-bearing alloys) but came instead from “domestic residential lead sources.” It also found that concentrations of six other elements — copper, cobalt, cadmium, beryllium, arsenic and antimony — were not high enough to present any health threat.

The MOE had assessed existing data on metal concentrations in soils around the Port Colborne plant in 1997, concluding that no adverse health effects were likely. Additional soil-sampling studies performed by the MOE itself between 1998 and 2000 found levels of soil contamination similar to the earlier figures in properties in the area.

The Port Colborne refinery still produces finished nickel and refined cobalt, but the base metal refinery being blamed for the contamination operated from 1918 to 1984.

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