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“This is the No. 1 priority,” Ministry of Environment spokeswoman Lisa Brygidyr said Thursday. The possibility that untreated, diluted black-liquor material is making its way into the lake arose Wednesday when on-site ministry staffers at Pebble Beach spotted a plume on the water‘s surface about 50 metres long. On Thursday, ministry and Tembec officials could no longer see the plume, likely because the water had turned choppy. Tembec, the pulp mill‘s former co-owner, is overseeing the cleanup and transfer of the chemicals under a ministry order. The area where the plume was spotted is close to where pump and chemical trucks have been cleaning up after black liquor leaked from a section of a five-kilometre effluent pipe about 10 days ago. Brygidyr noted the site of the leak is close to the shoreline, and that some of the leaked material may have migrated to the lake before cleanup crews were able to pump all of it out. There are currently no concerns that the material could get into drinking water, because the nearest intake pipe on Lake Superior is located 80 kilometres away in Terrace Bay, said Brygidyr. Marathon residents get their drinking water from a system of wells; ground water in that location flows away from the lake, she added. Marathon Mayor Rick Dumas said the town was notified about the plume the same day it was discovered. Black liquor is what‘s left over after wood chips are softened in a heated brew of sulphur and sodium-chloride. Dumas said he hadn‘t been updated Thursday and was still waiting to hear if ministry and Tembec officials had discovered the source of the plume. The sighted plume is the latest glitch to hamper the transfer and cleanup of about one million U.S. gallons of the diluted liquors that were left on site following the bankruptcy of Marathon Pulp last March. The effluent pipe that leads to a secondary treatment plant has leaked three times since the operation began in early December. Earlier this month, a storage tank inside the dormant mill was found to be leaking. A good portion of the liquors have been trucked off site to the AbitibiBowater pulp mill in Fort Frances. About 150,000 gallons being vacuumed up from the site of the third leak is to be transferred to a spill basin east of town and at the end of the pipe. Top of Page |
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September 2, 2010, 8:22 am |