North Bay Mayor Peter Chirico assured residents a controversial factory was safe on the very same day the company asked provincial officials which environmental permits it needed and what to do about flowing water around its site, according to newly released emails obtained by The Narwhal.
The new factory owned by Industrial Plastics Canada has been a source of both optimism and opposition in the region, as some residents point to job creation while others express concern about its planned use of fluoropolymers, a subcategory of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which are commonly referred to as PFAS or “forever chemicals.”
Responding to an article about the controversy in The Narwhal, Chirico assured residents on July 11, 2023, that the new factory’s operations “will not have any impact on local watercourses.” The mayor’s public statement also said the “facility will not discharge to land, or water. Air standards will be required to comply with Ontario environmental legislation and regulations like all manufacturers in the city of North Bay and within the province of Ontario.”
But that same day, the factory’s production manager was emailing Ontario’s Environment Ministry to ask exactly what operations required an air emissions permit and how to get one if Industrial Plastics needed it.
“What is the exact section of the act and the requirements for exhausting outside from the oven and what permit is required to be submitted,” Industrial Plastics’ production manager, Craig Rice, asked provincial officer Brent Trach, in an email obtained through freedom of information legislation. Rice appears to be referring to Ontario’s Environmental Protection Act, which governs the protection and conservation of the province’s land, water, air and wildlife habitat.
The correspondence has prompted at least one local expert to question whether the mayor had any evidence to back up his claims. “I’m not sure how he knows [Industrial Plastics Canada is] not going to discharge from land to water,” resident and environmental anthropologist Carly Dokis said after being told of the emails’ contents.
Chirico’s statement and Rice’s email came five days after The Narwhal first reported on the decades-long presence of PFAS in Nipissing Region water, and the planned use of the chemical class by Industrial Plastics Canada, whose parent company is Italy-based Guarniflon.
Published July 6, 2023, the article detailed how local and federal agencies are grappling with PFAS pollution from past Department of National Defence training in the region, as well as how Industrial Plastics Canada would ensure its operations didn’t release PFAS into soil, water or air.
Scientists say PFAS can linger in the environment for over 1,000 years if improperly disposed of. Potential health risks of exposure, according to Health Canada and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, include reproductive problems, increased risk of certain cancers and developmental effects in infants and children.
Last year, an Industrial Plastics Canada spokesman told The Narwhal its plan to use fluoropolymers will not produce waste and poses “no risk.” The company said fluoropolymers aren’t as dangerous as other per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and are “considered safe, non-bioaccumulative and non-toxic.” A company executive also said the company only uses, not manufactures, a fluoropolymer called polytetrafluoroethylene.
A company spokesperson also told The Narwhal that Industrial Plastics Canada complies “with all government regulations and standards to ensure the safe production of our plastics … These mandates are set by organizations such as the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Labour, and we strictly adhere to them.”
Industrial Plastics Canada did not respond to detailed questions from The Narwhal about the newly released emails. Nor did Mayor Chirico or the City of North Bay.
Ontario’s Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks has never answered any questions about Industrial Plastics Canada or PFAS in the Nipissing Region since The Narwhal began its reporting last year, including about these emails.
The emails show that Trach, from the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, visited the Industrial Plastics factory on the morning of July 11. “Have you heard of the new factory Industrial Plastics Canada in North Bay?” a ministry air compliance engineer named Jodie Horihan wrote to a number of colleagues that day. Her email included a link to The Narwhal’s first story.
She received a reply from Greg Ault, North Bay District Manager at the ministry, who told Horihan about Trach’s visit. “Brent was able to look at the processes that they will be undertaking and the only potential discharge will be from the industrial ovens they plan to use to cure the plastics,” Ault wrote.
Rice seemed less sure about the steps the company was required to undertake. On the afternoon of the same day, Rice emailed Trach to thank him for his visit and ask his question about an emissions permit.
In the same email, the production manager also flagged concerns about flowing water surrounding the Industrial Plastics property. “I was wondering if there have been any concerns regard [sic] excess dumping of water around are [sic] property from other businesses. As I said we have constant flowing water even when there has been no rain for weeks,” Rice wrote.
Later on July 11, Trach responded. “With regards to the water, I would first approach the city, since the flows are in their stormwater system and it could be a watermain break in their municipal water infrastructure, which they would be definitely interested in,” he said.
Mayor Chirico did not respond to a question about whether he had spoken to Rice or anyone else at Industrial Plastics about concerns around “constant flowing water” before making his July 11 statement.
As Ontario’s Environment Ministry has not responded to questions about the facility, The Narwhal submitted over a dozen requests under freedom of information legislation to the city and the province to determine how municipal and provincial officials were monitoring the facility.
While the Environment Ministry initially said it would turn over a complete set of inspection notes to The Narwhal last fall, it decided not to release the records after an unknown third party objected to a provincial information watchdog.
The Narwhal appealed for full release of the inspection notes, arguing they are in the public interest. During the course of mediation with the watchdog, the ministry agreed to release partially redacted, handwritten inspection notes and located the emails mentioned in this story.
Months later, The Narwhal has still not received the inspection notes in their entirety.
Nipissing University professor Dokis lives in North Bay with her family. She has worked to encourage northern Ontario residents, including Anishinaabe communities, to participate in management of mines, mass contamination sites and other environmental issues.
She wondered about the mayor’s evidence for the assertions in his official statement last summer. “When he says they will be required to operate under provincial air quality standards, he’s making an assumption that the province then is going to ensure compliance with that,” she said
Trach gave Rice a fairly detailed answer to his question about air permits. “As discussed, if equipment at the site (i.e. ovens) discharge emissions to the natural environment, there is a requirement in our legislation to obtain an approval,” Trach wrote, pointing Rice to section 9(1) of Ontario’s Environmental Protection Act.
Inside the ministry, Ault told Horihan the same thing. “Brent indicated to [Industrial Plastics Canada staff] that heat is considered a contaminant, and that they will require an [environmental compliance approval, or ECA] for air, and that they should immediately begin on submitting an ECA application,” Ault wrote.
An environmental compliance approval allows Ontario businesses to operate once they have sufficient environmental controls protecting human health and the natural environment. It is one of two ways the province mitigates potential environmental harm by industry. The other is the less stringent environmental activity and sector registry, or EASR, which the ministry website says is reserved for “less complex” operations with “lower risk.”
Industrial Plastics is not listed on the provincial registry as having an environmental compliance approval, suggesting it was not required to get one. Instead, it is listed on the environmental activity and sector registry.
Online self-registration on the registry is meant to “reduce the burden on industry who wanted to operate in Ontario,” Canadian Environmental Law Association researcher Fe de Leon said. She said companies on the registry undergo a lower level of scrutiny than those required to get an environmental compliance approval. The approval process involves a public comment period, while the registry does not.
Dokis said having two different levels of environmental oversight, one of which doesn’t require public input, is an example of how “the complexities of the regulatory process really stifle public participation.”
“It makes it very difficult for certain citizens to be able to understand how to effectively get answers to their questions, and then who to voice concerns to,” she said. “Good governance would seek to involve the public in making these kinds of decisions that, in fact, affect the entire community and have the potential to have pretty adverse effects.”
Local residents were expecting a public comment period and a chance to contribute to the decision-making, said Brennain Lloyd from the environmental advocacy group Northwatch. Over the past year, concerned citizens have held town hall meetings specifically about the Industrial Plastics plant — one of which company officials attended — as well as separate meetings about remediating PFAS from past National Defence activity.
Lloyd said the Environment Ministry’s decision not to require the more thorough environmental compliance approval was surprising and concerning.
“I don’t know how the decision was made,” Lloyd said, telling The Narwhal she asked both the province and the company clarifying questions, to no avail. “It’s certainly unsettling. It’s certainly dissatisfying … We think that transparency and openness and the opportunity for the public to comment is fundamental.”
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