VANCOUVER — Toxic pollutants from a metro Vancouver landfill near the Cache Creek are leaching into groundwater draining into both the Bonaparte River and wells that supply residences and agriculture irrigation, a Health Canada-funded study reports.
The landfill was designed to contain leachate for 200 years or more, but according to a study by Vancouver-based International EcoGen Inc., which investigated the site for the Nlaka'pamux Nation Tribal Council with federal funding, it is leaking heavy metals, The Globe and Mail reported on March 20. The landfill was constructed in 1989.
“I was quite floored by it,” International EcoGen President and CEO Michael Easton told The Globe and Mail.
A hydrogeological evaluation, done by Summit Environmental Consultants Ltd., Vernon, BC, in conjunction with Easton’s research, found groundwater is flowing under the landfill site and into a fractured bedrock zone that is carrying leachate toward a major drinking water source for the Ashcroft Indian Reserve. Easton said some wells already are tainted.
“If it was my personal drinking water source, I wouldn’t be drinking it. … I wouldn’t even be showering in it,” Easton told The Globe and Mail.
The investigation has revealed toxic levels of dioxins and furans, which are listed among the World Health Organization’s “dirty dozen” for their persistence both in the environment and in the human body and for their toxicity, within 1.2 miles from the site, according to a March 20 report in The Vancouver Sun.
Easton said in that report that the research is preliminary and the sample small, noting that the need for more rigorous testing is indicated.
To read the full Globe and Mail report, click here.
To read the full Vancouver Sun report, click here.
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