Ouje-Bougoumou mining contamination issue remains unresolved
Over the years the Nation has published many stories that have had an impact on the Cree of Eeyou Istchee. Some of them took on a life of their own. One that stands out is the Ouje-Bougoumou mining toxins story. The Nation covered the controversy extensively from 2001-2007, even winning national and provincial newspaper awards for investigative reporting on the issue in 2005. From the start, the Nation’s coverage was controversial, but so was the issue.
Quebec’s Department of the Environment admitted they knew about the unusually high toxic levels of arsenic, cyanide, cadmium, chromium, zinc, copper, selenium and mercury present in the fish surrounding the Ouje-Bougoumou area as far back as 1999. However, they waited until October 2001 to inform people living in the surrounding region. Quebec said children under six and women who were pregnant or planning to have a child should not eat fish from two local lakes because of contamination.
This news arrived just days after a Grand Council study was finalized on mining contamination in the Ouje territory. At first Quebec said the findings made by the scientists were unreliable but later admitted the study confirmed what they already knew. The study they were referring to was one undertaken by CL Covel PG LLC, owned by Christopher Covel, for the Grand Council.
Covel first visited Ouje-Bougoumou in March 2000 for cultural education as part of his studies for a Masters degree in Earth Sciences. Tallyman David Bosum requested that Covel take a sediment sample where “sick fish” were being found. Bosum took the American geologist to the Campbell Point mine site, where he discovered a kilometres-wide kill-zone.
“Kill-zones are like red flags,” stated Covel, explaining that the term refers to areas so contaminated that nothing, not even weeds or lichen, could grow there.
“There were mine tailings everywhere,” he added. Covel took a sample and had it analysed at his own expense. The toxin levels were so high that the lab technician didn’t add his services to the price.
Bosum was not the only Cree to express concerns about sick and mutated fish. The late Joseph Shecapio-Blacksmith, then working as Ouje-Bougoumou’s environment administrator, talked the matter over with Chief Sam Bosum. The Grand Council held a community meeting to discuss the problem and felt it should be investigated.
For the study, Covel looked at aerial photos, took water, sediment, fish and hair samples and reviewed data from the Quebec Ministry of Natural Resources, looked at historical files and publications of the Chibougamau Mining District, and researched the social and political history of Eeyou Istchee.
Provincial bureaucrats weren’t the only people to question Covel’s study. McMaster University toxicologist Evert Nieboer and Quebec physician Eric Dewailly challenged his results with a survey study titled “Exposure And Preliminary Health Assessment of the Ouje-Bougoumou Cree Population to Mine Tailings Residues”.
In 2003, Nieboer and Dewailly even questioned the Quebec government recommendation that pregnant women should not consume local fish. “There is not a health emergency,” Nieboer said at the time, accusing Covel of grandstanding.
While the Grand Council commissioned the Nieboer-Dewailly study, funding largely came from the Quebec Ministry of the Health and the National Health Institute. The report concluded that the Ouje Cree were not at risk of systematic exposure to toxins related to mining in the region.
The battle of the scientists was in its first stages. Roger Masters, the co-author of Covel’s study, criticized the Nieboer-Dewailly study for looking at each toxin in isolation – ignoring the potential effects of how two or more contaminants interact. Just as combining alcohol with drugs can be dangerous, he explained, different combinations of toxins vastly increase the chance of harm.
In 2001 and 2002, the Quebec government received two studies concerning the Ouje contamination, but did not release the results until the Republican Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire demanded the information from Quebec Premier Jean Charest in the spring of 2005.
Sample after sample recorded in these studies showed readings of dangerous heavy metals, many times higher than that allowed under Canadian law.
For example, arsenic readings in samples from Dore Lake were as high as 44 times the allowable limit under the Canadian Environmental Quality Guidelines. Samples collected by Quebec since 1998 revealed that heavy metal contamination was in excess of the Probable Effect Level (PEL) up to 3.5 kilometres downstream from mine tailings. PEL means the sample is extremely toxic and shouldn’t even be touched with the skin. Both of those reports said that a minimum of 40.6 tons of contaminated waste had been dumped into the Chibougamau and Dore lakes.
Senator Sununu’s office analyzed the documents and found that the six most contaminated sites were not even tested for chromium, cadmium, selenium, strontium and beryllium.
The results backed up beleaguered scientist Covel, who had always told naysayers to “prove me wrong.”
Frustration boiled over during an April 2007 meeting in Ouje-Bougoumou.
“It’s been seven years of studies after studies,” said local resident Louise Wapachee. “We all know there is something wrong. How long will it be before we actually do something?”
Since learning about the potential dangers to the community of Ouje-Bougoumou, particularly the trapping families who live off the land, the Nation has followed this issue and tried to present all viewpoints fairly. After 2005 and 2007, we expected some action would be taken to safeguard the health of those who hunt and fish in the region.
The Quebec government promised quick action, but more than a decade later nothing concrete has been done to clean up the old mining sites. Meanwhile, the talk continues: the Ouje-Bougoumou band council will have a technical meeting with Quebec officials on the issue in early November.