Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t the Ministry of Environment criteria of 24/7 exposure and in 1 in 1,000,000 risk ‘quite’ protective? I can understand (like with Part 2A) why an intervention/unacceptable level would be higher than that....
Dave Fountain
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From: Contaminated Land Management Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tony Windsor
Sent: 24 June 2014 13:22
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Canada: Alberta TCE Class Action - Claims In Trespass, Nuisance, Rylands V. Fletcher Dismissed
What's of, perhaps, more interest toxicologically is that the impacts of TCE in Canada are being felt more and more frequently. There are a number of community wide risk assessment/risk management programs ongoing in Ontario alone right now. The attached link provides a good synopsis of one major one where the company directors were personally found liable (Wambolt v Northstar):
What is also interesting is that the standards that the Ministry of Environment/local city require to be treated as action levels before ventilation occurs are at least an order of magnitude too high (Action level of 2.3-23 ug/m3 v MOE human health criteria for residences of 0.6ug/m3). The MOE criteria is based on 24/7/365 exposure of course and 1 in 1,000,000 risk.
What this does suggest is that meeting the Ministry health standards is "difficult" to start with and it is only going to get worse as the new EPA tox values are implemented (we have to use them in all new risk assessments so vapour mitigation/on-site vapour testing is being the norm).
End result - Tort law is the beginning and its likely that the lawyers will be getting more and more active!
On 24 June 2014 04:31, Paul Nathanail <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I am grateful to Lenny Siegel, Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight (http://www.cpeo.org) for bringing this to my attention. I was struck by the reference to Ryalnds v Fletcher - sometimes we forget the long legal shadow cast over the former colonies:
Canada: Alberta TCE Class Action – Claims In Trespass, Nuisance, Rylands V. Fletcher Dismissed
by Meredith James, Saxe Law Office
Mondaq
June 23 2014
Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) operated a train repair facility, known as the Ogden shops, since the early 1900s in a heavily industrialized area outside Calgary. Over the years, a residential area grew up around the shops. TCE was used as a degreaser in the shops from the mid-1950s to the mid- 1980s. In 1999, CPR discovered that TCE had contaminated the groundwater and migrated into parts of the adjacent residential community. It subsequently installed sub-slab depressurization systems under approximately 70 homes, where the TCE exceeded Health Canada thresholds. It did not provide any remediation at properties below those thresholds.
In 2006, CPR's neighbours successfully certified a class action against it in negligence, nuisance, trespass and strict liability under Rylands v. Fletcher, based on the diminution in property value and loss of rental income. They did not claim damages for physical injury or health problems.
...
For the entire article, see
kind regards
Paul