Industry off the hook for mercury monitoring at mill that poisoned Grassy Narrows First Nation

Taxpayers, not industry, will have to pay for environmental monitoring at a pulp mill in Dryden, Ont., infamous for its poisoning of people in two northern Ontario First Nations,according to a recent ruling by an Ontario court.

Ontario was attempting to get twoformer owners of the mill to pay for ongoingmonitoring at the mills former disposal site where 9,000 kilograms of mercury was dumped into the English-WabigoonRiver system in the 1960s and 70s.

But a deal struck by Ontario to facilitate the sale of the millin 1979, helped protectthefuture owners of the mill, according to a ruling by the Ontario Superior Courtin July.

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The mercury continues to contaminate the water and fishand poison the people at Grassy Narrows andWabaseemoong(Whitedog)First Nations, who rely on fish as a dietary staple.

A recent report, funded by Ontario, shows theremay be an ongoing source of contamination at the mill site.

In 2011, Ontario's Ministry of Environment issued a remediation order against pulp and paper giantsWeyerhaeuser and Resolute, both former owners of the mill, regarding a mercury disposal site on the mill property.

The American companies fought the order, and last month, the Ontario Superior Court sided with them.

The ruling goes back to a 1979 decision by government to encourage the sale of the paper mill while its owners were being sued for the mercury contamination by Grassy Narrows and Wabaseemoong (Whitedog) First Nations.

Protection from future environmental liability was offered to then-mill owner Great Lakes Paper and previous owner Reed Paperby the province in 1979, in part because "enabling the modernization and upgrading of the plant in the community of Drydenwas deemed to be in the public interest," according to court documents.

That protection was reiterated in a1985 settlement of the lawsuit because both companies "agreed to contribute substantial sums of money" toward the $17 million of compensation package for the First Nations.

The court ruling in July determinedthat agreement results in indemnification toResolute and Weyerhaeuser, who also once owned the Dryden mill,for their costs of complying with Ontario's environmentalremediation orders.

The mercury disposal site was severed from the mill property in 2000 when Bowater (now Resolute) owned the mill.The site was abandoned as part of Bowater's bankruptcy proceedings in 2009.