Spanish Harbour: In the shadow of the Big Nickel

"Models showed that a 90 per cent reduction in contaminant loading (in the Spanish Harbour) is required to reduce nickel to sediment quality targets set by the province. This would require more than 40 years to achieve."

By Craig Gilbert
Nickel contamination in the Whalesback Channel, the final destination for all water flowing from the Spanish River, is so extensive it would take decades to bring the area to within provincial safety standards.

That's according to a draft report from Environment Canada, presented to the Friends of the Spanish River, a volunteer group tasked with helping to return the water body to its pre-industrial glory, by scientist Mark Chambers.

According to the report he presented on March 10, the degradation of the benthos (organisms that live at or near the riverbed and serve as a food source for larger fish) in the Spanish Harbour is caused by "elevated levels of metals and dioxins within aquatic sediment." It said:

"Models showed that a 90 per cent reduction in contaminant loading is required to reduce nickel to sediment quality targets set by the province Š this would require more than 40 years to achieve."
Environment Canada collected sediment samples from 15 different sites within the Spanish Harbour and Whalesback Channel in 2003. According to the draft report, elevated nickel, dioxin and furan levels at 11 of the sites were determined to be "severely toxic" and "four of the 15 sites had benthic communities different from the reference sites, and nickel was most correlated with this response."

The report goes on to say that a natural attenuation (i.e. without human intervention) model for nickel and copper developed by the University of Toronto in 2006 "showed the net release of nickel and copper from the watershed in to the Area in Recovery could continue for over 100 years."
Chambers, Environment Canada's program officer for the Great Lakes Areas of Concern (AoC) visited the Friends, a key stakeholder in the recovery effort, at their AGM March 10 to get feedback on the first draft of his Spanish Harbour Area in Recovery Status Report.
The draft is the first follow-up after the Friends hosted a five-year update on the Remedial Action Plan (RAP) for the Spanish River and Spanish Harbour in the form of an all-day workshop in October of last year. The idea is to have the AoC encompassing the river and the harbour "de-listed," or returned to a healthy state. The river itself, according to information presented at the October workshop is in stage two of the de-listing process, referred to as an Area in Recovery (AiR) since 1999. This means all recommended actions to repair the ecosystem have been completed but "one or more restoration target remain to be achieved (and) time was required for natural processes to complete the restoration.
"The remaining issues to be tackled were mercury and dioxin levels in large walleye and associated consumption advisories, and elevated levels of dioxins in sediments that have resulted in degrade benthic community health, contaminants in benthos and dredging restrictions."
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) "dioxins are environmental pollutants belonging to the 'dirty dozen' - a group of dangerous chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants. Dioxins are of concern because of their highly toxic potential. Once dioxins have entered the body, they endure a long time because of their chemical stability and their ability to be absorbed by fat tissue, where they are then stored in the body. Their half-life in the body is estimated to be seven to eleven years. In the environment, dioxins tend to accumulate in the food chain. The higher in the animal food chain one goes, the higher is the concentration of dioxins."

Dioxins are typically present because of industrial processes. In the case of the Spanish, according to an RAP report from 1993, that means impacts "from the Espanola sewage treatment plant, historic log-driving operations, effluent from the pulp and paper mill in Espanola and from historic and ongoing mining, milling and smelting activities in the Sudbury area (contaminants are transported from the Nickel City to the Spanish AiR via the Vermillion River, which meets the Spanish above Espanola)."
The AiR covers the lower 52 kilometres of the Spanish River from Espanola to the river mouth at Spanish, and extends from the harbour area to the western end of Kirke and Green Islands. Spanish Harbour was designated as an area of concern in 1987 under the bi-national Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. According to the report it was "one of the Canadian sites on the Great Lakes system where human activities had severely damaged the quality of the water environment."
During the 1990s, upgrades were made to the sewage plant in Espanola resulting in "substantial reductions in nutrient and bacteria levels entering the Spanish River," the Espanola mill was "often proactive in upgrading its facilities" rendering its effluent "non-toxic and very low BOD (biochemical oxygen demand)," and the Friends led an effort to re-introduce the muskellunge to the Spanish in hopes of recreating a self-sustaining population of the fish to the system.

Six of the original nine "beneficial use impairments" were completely restored by 1999 and the other three - restrictions on fish and wildlife consumption, degradation of benthos and restrictions on dredging activities - just needed time, prompting the change for the Spanish Harbour from area of concern to area in recovery. With this change the harbour became the first AoC to be recognized as an AiR by the federal and provincial governments.