Timeline on incinerator boiler restart unknown
Regional councillors call for more testing at Clarington site
While the region is still unsure as to when exactly Boiler No. 1 at the Durham York Energy Centre will be brought back online, some regional councillors have called for more testing at the site. The boiler was shut down after tests showed it was pumping out more than 13 times the limit of dioxins and furans earlier this year. As well, the amount of particulate matter detected at the two nearby air monitoring stations is coming close to the limit set by the Canadian Ambient Air Quality Standard, and is expected to continue to rise with increased construction and traffic in the area.
By Graeme McNaughton/The Oshawa Express
The question about whn a boiler responsible for emitting multiple times the limit of dioxins and furans will be back online remains unknown, and now several regional councillors are joining the call for more testing at the Durham York Energy Centre to prevent such a thing from happening again.
According to Mirka Januszkiewicz, the region’s director of waste management, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change has sent back a proposed abatement plan by Covanta, the incinerator’s operator, requesting more information and for clarifications on the plan.
“The big question is…when boiler one will be online. I cannot answer this question today in front of you. I do not know,” Januszkiewicz said during the latest meeting of regional council.
“It will take some time.”
While the timeline for the boiler’s restart remains unclear, delegations to council brought up another factor the region should be paying more attention to: ultra fine-particulate matter.
According to Wendy Bracken, a critic of the incinerator and frequent delegation to council on the subject, the levels of ultra-fine particulate matter are not being looked at critically, with the substance potentially leading to health concerns for those who inhale it.
“Your filters don’t catch those ultra-fines,” Bracken said, referring to matter that measures 2.5 micrometres in diameter, adding the incinerator’s filters typically catch between five to 30 per cent of them.
“You’ve got a massive surface area on these ultra-fine particulate, high levels of heavy and transition metals, and all of this is missed in your analysis because they’re not looking at those ultrafines.”
According to a report presented to the region’s works committee, the air monitoring stations were picking up higher than normal levels of particulate matter even before the incinerator was in operation, with a 24-hour average concentration of 22.6 and 23.5 micrograms per cubic metre at the Courtice and Rundle Road stations respectively between July 2013 and June 2014. Those numbers went up to 23.4 and 26.6 respectively between July 2014 and June 2015.
According to the Canadian Ambient Air Quality Standard, the limit for a 24-hour average concentration is 28 micrograms per cubic metre.
Cliff Curtis, the region’s works commissioner, says these numbers will only go up with increased traffic in the area.
“What you will see in the ambient air over the next few years with the new highway – forget the construction, once the highway is done – with the increase of vehicles and traffic, you will be seeing more particulate matter in that area, and generally along the 407,” he said.
“So Clarington will be subject to a higher load from the transportation system.”
A call for more tests
Towards the end of the debate, which stretched for more than an hour, Whitby councillor Joe Drumm said the questions being directed at staff are unfair, and that they are targeting the wrong entity.
“The problems are with Covanta. So you don’t get a shotgun and shoot everybody; get a rifle and point it. And Covanta is the problem,” Drumm said.
“They built it, designed it and they did the testing. And I have to say the ministry, in my opinion, hasn’t really been as forthright as they should’ve been.”
Drumm later added that he believes more testing needs to be done at the incinerator to ensure it is being operated as it was supposed to.
“I’m of the opinion now – I wasn’t before – but I’m seriously of the opinion that we have to do more testing. This may cost us more money. They may not want to do that, they may say they’re doing enough and doing what the ministry wants,” Drumm said.
“When the ministry sets a standard, that’s always, in my opinion, a minimum standard. We have to go beyond that.”
Drumm’s call for more standards at the incinerator echo a motion passed by Clarington’s council last month, calling on the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change to mandate stack testing be carried out at the site on an annual basis for the next five years.
The motion was included in regional council’s agenda as a piece of correspondence, and was received for information.
With the construction of new highways in the area potentially affecting the levels of particulate matter, Clarington councillor Joe Neal says the region should be extending its testing schedule “out a couple of years to find out what’s actually going on.”
Gregory Crooks, a project manager on the incinerator for Stantec, one of the region’s consultants on the portfolio, said that extending the ambient air monitoring schedule would be a good idea.
“I would say that that’s a reasonable approach to take. That would be worthwhile to do to answer the question (on interference from other sources,” he said in response to Neal.