There
are times when Ada Lockridge considers packing her bags and moving far
from her home at the Aamjiwnaang First Nation reserve in the heart of
Chemical Valley.
"I'd leave, but only if the whole reserve left because they
are my family, all of them," said Lockridge, who helped co-ordinate a
symposium this week to draw international attention to environmental
health issues in Sarnia.
She said there are others among the 800 on the reserve who say they won't leave no matter what happens.
"They say they're going to stay here and fight, so I will too," said Lockridge.
Yet, there have been other communities surrounded by heavy
industry that chose to desert rather than fight, the symposium heard.
Dr. Devra Davis, the director of the world's first centre for
environmental oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer
Institute, told the gathering of scientists, activists and government
officials that several towns in Louisiana have been abandoned.
"Reveilletown, Louisiana is gone," Davis said. "I'm sure it's
been considered by you in Sarnia. The people decided to do something
radical and they left."
The residents of Mossville, Louisiana also moved away from a
cluster of polyvinylchloride factories. "The only thing left of the
town is a memorial sign of those who died from the toxic environment.
"I don't advocate moving as a good thing," Davis added. "But we need to question whether we need to live close to (industry)."
She noted that one-fifth of Canada's petroleum refineries are in
Chemical Valley, a high concentration that isn't likely to go anywhere.
"We're not going to put that genie back in the bottle . . . so what we need is a global commitment to change."
Denny Larson, executive director of a non-profit environmental
monitoring group, told the audience that it's impossible to make living
near a chemical plant safe.
"In Sarnia, people are living too close to pollution," Larson
said. "You have to have breathing space between people and these
facilities."
His organization, Global Community Monitor, started working
with the Aamjiwnaang a year ago and provided them with their own air
monitoring system and the training to use it.
It was the first project for the so-called bucket brigade in
Canada. "When I came, I was shocked by the lack of (air) monitors
here," Larson said. "What you have is pitifully insufficient."
Sarnia depends primarily on the Sarnia-Lambton Environmental Association for its air monitoring.
The industry-funded group has seven monitors from Centennial
Park in Sarnia to Corunna but is not obligated to report any of its
data.
"What you need in Sarnia is at least 10 monitors and they should be monitoring the fence line of each facility," said Larson.
The Ministry of Environment recently announced it would provide
a monitoring station for the Aamjiwnaang, something Larson called a
great victory. The first results of the bucket brigade monitoring in
January showed high levels of toxic chemicals including benzene,
chloromethane, chlorobenzene, ethylbenzene and isoprene.
Lockridge said a second sampling was taken recently at the
Aamjiwnaang graveyard on a day when there were no smells in the air.
Those results will be publicly released in about a week once all
analyses are complete.
The government monitoring station is expected to be installed within weeks.
