Lis Stannus remembers how serious the problem of acid rain was in Ontario when she lived on a farm near Lake Huron as a child. So when Rio Tinto Alcan informed Kitimat residents of its plans to increase sulphur dioxide pollution — a key contributor to acid rain —she couldn’t understand why no one fought back.

“Nobody was speaking out,” Stannus said, “and I found it amazing that those people who should have been speaking out weren’t.”

Rio Tinto Alcan received a permit from the B.C. government in 2013 that allowed the company to increase production of aluminum at its smelter in Kitimat, leading to a 56 per cent increase in sulphur dioxide emissions. Currently, both the government and Rio Tinto Alcan are defending that permit in front of a tribunal acting for the B.C. Environmental Appeals Board in Kitimat.

Rio Tinto Alcan says its ‘modernization’ of the smelter is now 94 per cent complete although the tribunal has the power to rescind the province’s permit, putting the immediate future of the plant in question.

The Muzzle Effect: Small Town, Big Company

Stannus said when she first heard about the emissions increase she contacted the city, the Kitimat health authority and local environmental groups to push back against the company’s plans, to no avail.

But it didn’t take long for Stannus to realize “there was a lot of muzzling” going on, she said. “We are all muzzled here.”

Part of the problem, Stannus said, is that the aluminum plant is a major job provider for Kitimat.

“Without Alcan, Kitimat would be nothing,” she said. “Kitimat literally wouldn’t be here.”

Alcan, now owned by multi-national mining magnate Rio Tinto, used to be fondly referred to as “Uncle Al” by Kitimat residents.

The company created Kitimat as an artificial township in the 1950s to support a growing workforce. Although the planned city was originally created with 150,000 residents in mind, its current population is between 8,000 and 9,000 — about 1,400 of which rely on the smelter for employment.

“It’s like nobody would speak out if they worked for Rio Tinto Alcan,” she said. “You just wouldn’t speak up.”

Stannus said she recently spoke to an employee of Rio Tinto Alcan who said he was reprimanded by company officials for posting about sulphur dioxide emissions on his Facebook page.

Morris Amos from the Haisla First Nation said his band council and Rio Tinto Alcan entered into a $22 million “Legacy Agreement” that acts as a gag order on Haisla officials.

“Part of the language of the agreement, which is really more of a contract, includes a clause that talks about the Haisla Nation never coming forward to question anything that Alcan does as long as the agreement is in effect,” he said.

The Legacy Agreement, signed in 2010, guarantees employment, business opportunities and a trust fund for the Haisla Nation as an outcome of Rio Tinto Alcan’s modernization project.

Amos, brother of former elected Haisla chief Gerald Amos, said the agreement means his nation can’t officially question the increase of Rio Tinto Alcan’s sulphur dioxide emissions.

“I take that as a muzzling clause,” he said. “It remains to be seen if that has any force or effect legally — it hasn’t been challenged yet.”

Amos says the Legacy Agreement explains why the Haisla Nation hasn’t played a role in fighting for pollution reductions.

The Legacy Agreement, “is part of the reason why there’s no band council presence in this Environmental Appeals Board hearing,” he said.

Amos said he can speak out about the Legacy Agreement and Rio Tinto Alcan’s sulphur dioxide emissions because he’s not a part of the band council.

“I work for a heredity chief, so that’s another thing altogether.”

Rio Tinto Alcan’s Permit to Pollute

B.C. approved a permit in April 2013 that granted Rio Tinto Alcan the right to increase its sulphur dioxide emissions by 56 per cent.

Stannus, along with fellow Kitimat resident Emily Toews, is appealing that permit approval in the Environmental Appeals Board hearing, arguing the increase in sulphur dioxide emissions unnecessarily threatens human health.

“I was really mad,” Stannus said. “Because it seemed like an infringement of our rights and it went against everything the government told us we were working towards: reducing emissions, keeping the air clean.”

Stannus realized she needed to speak out. “ I thought, ‘I can do it. I don’t have anything to lose.’”

Pollution Reduction Measures Not Required by Province

Rio Tinto Alcan’s ability to reduce its sulphur dioxide emissions is central to the appeal hearings.

Giving testimony before the appeal panel, Ian Sharpe, director of environmental protection with the B.C. Ministry of Environment, said before granting the permit he required evidence Rio Tinto Alcan “could and would” install pollution reduction technology called scrubbers “should there be a need to have emissions lower than what they applied for.”

But rather than require the company to install scrubbers, which would prevent the increase of sulphur dioxide emissions, the province granted Rio Tinto Alcan a permit to increase its emissions for an indefinite amount of time.

Sharpe told the panel he decided not to impose sulphur dioxide limits on Rio Tinto Alcan because both B.C. and the federal government are considering updating their own standards in coming years.

Stannus said she doesn’t understand why the province will allow emissions to go up if the company has already prepared for the installation of scrubbers.

“I learned there was a place put at the plant for wet scrubbers. That was a backup plan,” she said. “I thought, ‘if scrubbers aren’t feasible, why would they do that?’”

Stannus thinks it comes down to penny pinching. Rio Tinto Alcan initially announced its modernization project would cost just over $2 billion but that number has recently skyrocketed to nearly $5 billion.

The Environmental Appeal Board hearings are currently taking place in Kitimat and are now in their third week. The panel could rescind Rio Tinto Alcan’s permit or order the company to install scrubbers.

Image Credit: Lis Stannus courtesy of Doug Keech.

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Increased sulphur dioxide (SO2) pollution from the expanded Rio Tinto Alcan (RTA) aluminum smelter in Kitimat, B.C. will result in increased health costs for local households, an expert witness told an Environmental Appeals Board panel in Victoria, Monday.

Dr. Brian Scarfe, an economist and cost-benefit analyst from the University of Victoria, testified before the tribunal that the externalized health costs placed on residents living near the Kitimat smelter will outstrip the cost of introducing scrubbers — which remove SO2 pollution from effluent — to the RTA plant.

In 2013 the B.C. government approved RTA’s permit to increase production of the smelter. The ‘modernization’ project will limit the release of other aluminum-associated emissions including greenhouse gases, but will result in a 56 per cent increase of sulphur dioxide being pumped into the airshed.

B.C. ruled RTA was not required to install scrubbers to prevent the SO2 increase from 27 to 42 tonnes per day.

Two Kitimat elementary teachers, Emily Toews and Lis Stannus are appealing the $3.3 billion project upgrade, saying it poses an unnecessary threat to human and environmental health. Appellant Emily Toews suffers from asthma, which heightens her sensitivity to even low SO2 levels. Children and the elderly are both at higher risk to SO2 exposure.

Before the appeal panel Scarfe argued the issue comes down cost distribution.

“I don’t like to think of this as a zero sum game, but that is what we have: costs are going to fall one way or another, benefits are going to fall one way or another,” he said.

"If you have a process that is generating some form of pollution you need to consider that an impact on the environment and perhaps on human life — that’s an externality."

“We can think about households on one side and RTA on the other: clearly if nothing is done to limit SO2 there will be costs to the environment and costs to households in the area and that’s one kind of distribution," he said.

"The costs fall on one side while the other avoids costs.”

High Sulphur Content of North American Petroleum Coke a Factor

According to Scarfe, the petroleum coke or petcoke, a byproduct of refined hydrocarbons, being used in RTA’s smelting operations is very high in sulphur content.

He said the higher the sulphur content of the petcoke, “the larger the SO2 emissions will be in relation to the production capacity of the plant.”

Scarfe added the low-sulphur petcoke market has dried up in recent years and that the higher levels of sulphur present in petcoke feeds may be the outcome of increased unconventional hydrocarbon production like fracking. Petcoke is also a waste product of bitumen upgrading in the Alberta oilsands, where the sulphur content is extremely high.

“The sulphur content of petroleum being extracted in North America has gone up in number over time,” Scarfe said. The weighted average sulphur content in U.S. refineries has risen from 0.9 per cent in 1985 to 1.4 per cent in 2014.

RTA’s modernization proposal says the smelter expects to use petcoke with an average of 2.9 per cent sulphur but could be as high as 3.8 per cent.

These levels of sulphur would exceed the acceptable limits for smelters without scrubbers in foreign countries such as Iceland, Scarfe said.

“If you were looking for solutions for large amounts of sulphur dioxide one of the options would be to buy petcoke, even if more expensive, with lower sulphur content.”

He added that given a consistent supply of low-sulphur petcoke can’t be guaranteed, a safer long term solution for the Kitimat airshed would be for RTA to install scrubbers.

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The Kitimat airshed can “accommodate” increased industrial growth and pollution according to a new Kitimat Airshed Study released Friday.

The study, commissioned by British Columbia last year to assess the impact of industrial pollutants on the Kitimat airshed, was released one month after lawyers representing Kitimat locals asked the Environmental Appeal Board to force the province to make the report public.

The province previously claimed cabinet privilege and refused to release the report to two women, Emily Toews and Elisabeth Stannus, who are fighting to overturn a 2013 ruling to allow increased sulphur dioxide emissions from Rio Tinto Alcan’s smelter ‘modernization project’ in Kitimat.

The government-funded report concludes the Kitimat airshed, if properly managed, can safely accommodate industrial expansion, including the expanded aluminum smelter expected to increase levels of sulphur and nitrogen oxide in the area.

The study took into account Rio Tinto Alcan’s existing smelter, the smelter’s modernization project, four proposed liquid natural gas (LNG) facilities, one proposed oil refinery, a potential BC Hydro gas powered turbine facility and increased emissions from tanker traffic.

Environment Minister Mary Polak, attending a press conference in Vancouver today, said “the study tells us that with proper management there is significant capacity in the Kitimat airshed to safely accommodate industrial growth, while still protecting human health and the environment.”

“This report is helping shape management strategies to protect air quality, human health and our overall environment,” she said.

Minister Polak wouldn’t speak directly to questions about the withholding of the report, saying “we had always intended to release it…. I can’t comment directly on why they would have made that decision.”

She also said she wouldn’t comment on how the delay related to an appeal against the Rio Tinto Alcan smelter modernizations, but said “I know it related to the request they made specifically.”

Merran Smith, director of Clean Energy Canada, responded to the study, saying “the provincial government says the impacts of the proposed LNG plants will be manageable, but the reality is that burning natural gas to make LNG elevates levels of air pollutants that create acid rain and worsen asthma and other respiratory illnesses.”

Smith said Kitimat already suffers from a smog problem and both B.C. and industry need to take clean energy solutions more seriously if they are to live up to their own standards.

“If the industry moves forward with proposals to build gas-fired LNG plants in Kitimat, more people are at greater risk of getting sick more often. Proponents can largely eliminate this threat – reducing air emission by 70 per cent – by powering their plants with electric drives running on locally generated renewable energy.”

“Industry needs to step up to the plate,” she added.

The report was authored by ESSA Technologies, the same company hired by Rio Tinto Alcan to write a report, “Sulphur Dioxide Technical Assessment Report,” in support of the smelter’s expansion.

Rio Tinto Alcan claims “studies show [sulphur dioxide] from Kitimat Modernization project will not cause respiratory diseases in healthy people, but there may be a less than one per cent increase in restricted airway events for those with existing conditions such as asthma or COPD,” in a company brochure.

The company decided not to install air scrubbers, capable of reducing sulphur dioxide from industrial emissions, due to what they determined would be ‘limited’ impacts.

Minister Polak said the study focused solely on nitrogen and sulphur dioxide emissions and did not look at greenhouse gas or other particulate emissions.

Image Credit: Diagram of sulphur deposition, pg. 33 in the study.

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