John-Wesley Weber alerted his mother Michelle of some barrels he had stumbled upon on their property near Conestoga, Ontario. Michelle suspected that the illegally abandoned barrels, all 24 of them, contained hazardous waste, so she called the Region of Waterloo, Waterloo Regional Police Services, and the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change. “Aside from offering sympathies and concern, none of them offered any real guidance or support”, said Michelle.
Upon contacting one environmental services company, testing of the barrels determined that they contained PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl), a toxic chemical that was once commonly used in manufacturing but was banned in Canada in 1977, and the release of PCB into the environment was made illegal in 1985. The company was not equipped to handle the PCB, so our Ayr, Ontario hazardous waste service facility, which is licensed to handle and remove PCB hazardous waste, was called in to help.
“PCB removal is expensive, around $1200 per barrel, so in this family’s case the total cost of removing all 24 barrels would have been $21,000”, said our company’s president, Byron Day. “We could have chemically destroyed it, but this toxic waste was old, it had been sitting around for a while, so for safety purposes it had to be sent to Alberta to be incinerated”. Due to the exorbitant cost of disposing of the hazardous waste material, we offered to remove the drums free of charge from Michelle and Johns property. Two full weeks of constant phone calls and worry-filled sleepless nights finally came to an end when the barrels of hazardous waste were removed. “It’s a huge relief”, says Michelle. Even though there was little spillage, she and her husband John plan to have the soil on which the barrels sat, excavated and tested for hazardous waste content.
News of our involvement in helping this Woolwich Township family quickly spread, and soon after we received correspondence from the United Way of Cambridge, Ontario, and Kitchener-Conestoga MPP Michael Harris, commending us for our community involvement.
