Happy campers beside the oily nuclear plant?



 

Tom Spears

Ottawa Citizen

June 20, 2005











Inverhuron Provincial Park, on Lake Huron, pre-oil spill.

Bruce Power makes it sound like a pretty small event: A transformer fire and oil spill on their property, the Bruce Nuclear Power Development, on Lake Huron. It’s North America’s biggest commercial nuclear complex, so people’s attention naturally turned to one question: Are the nukes safe?

Yes. The explosion and fire of April 15 never touched them.

But two months later, the lake is still fouled by spilled oil.

The official version is that only a small bit of oil reached the lake, not enough to do any serious harm.

Bruce Power's version: The oil will leave a fine sheen but shouldn't hurt the fish.

"The oil is biodegradable, has very low levels of toxicity and contains no PCBs or radioactive

material. It breaks down naturally over time in sunlight and exposure to various weather conditions."

Still, local resident Bob MacKenzie was walking along the shore on the weekend, and the shoreline is still fouled with oil. He reports finding on the rocks:

• White absorbent material that soaks up oil. There’s oil apparent in it.
  
• Canvas-like strips, bright yellow and each about four metres long, stretching in hundreds of metres along the shoreline. These were from an attempt to surround contain the oil in a small area of the water’s surface.
  
• Metal floatation devices stamped with the name of a company that makes equipment for cleaning up oil spills.
  
• Dead fish.

The dead fish may be natural. The rest seems less so.

And what makes it creepier is that this piece of shoreline is an Ontario provincial park - Inverhuron, which is due to re-open to overnight campers for the first time in 29 years next month. It had been closed because of the danger of a chemical leak from the Bruce plant, but the source of that chemical work is now closed.

As Mr. MacKenzie walked around picking up samples, boats were chugging along the lake, dragging booms along the water's surface.

Let's hope the campers appreciate it.