Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment is investigating a Sarnia-area petrochemical company for an incident in which large flames billowed from an industrial plant last year.Clouds of fire and steam towered over Imperial Oil for five hours on Feb. 24, 2017 after equipment malfunctioned. Vanessa Gray, a resident of the nearby First Nation community of Aamjiwnaang, filed an application in October to have the provincial government investigate the incident. Gray’s co-applicant, Elaine MacDonald, a scientist with the environmental law not-for-profit agency Ecojustice, said the pair are happy the ministry heeded their request but are eagerly awaiting the results.“No community should have to withstand that type of activity,” MacDonald said.A joint investigation by the Star, Global News, National Observer, the Michener Awards Foundation and journalism schools at Ryerson and Concordia universities revealed a troubling pattern of secrecy and potentially toxic leaks in Sarnia, also known as the Chemical Valley.In October, Ontario environmental commissioner Dianne Saxe blasted the provincial government for turning a blind eye to serious pollution in Indigenous communities, including Aamjiwnaang, for decades. Fifty-seven industrial polluters within 25 kilometres of Sarnia are registered with the Canadian and U.S. governments.The flames at Imperial erupted from the facility’s flare stacks at about 6:20 p.m. on Feb. 23, 2017, the company has said. The flares continued for roughly five hours and continued to be larger than normal on-and-off for the next 10 days, according to Gray and MacDonald’s filing.The sight of a small flame atop a flare, generally used to burn off materials from the plant, is common in the Chemical Valley. Though flares can result in emissions — Saxe flagged the cumulative effects of such pollution as an issue in her annual report to Queen’s Park in October — many in the Sarnia area don’t think the ...
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