Feds 'covered up' toxic chemicals in the water in this Ontario city for 5 years

The federal government concealed toxic water contamination in North Bay, Ont., for almost five years before warning residents of a dangerous chemical spill from the city’s airport and a nearby military base, according to records obtained by the Investigative Journalism Bureau.

In 2012, the Department of National Defence (DND) discovered the elevated levels of so-called “forever chemicals,” which are associated with a growing list of health issues including cancers, kidney disease, liver problems, altered immune function, birth defects and other serious problems, according to the newly uncovered records.

However, although the chemical levels found dramatically exceeded Health Canada guidance for drinking water at the time, DND did not inform local government officials about the public health threat until late 2016 — in apparent violation of provincial environmental law — and only revealed it publicly in 2017.

“It’s a government cover-up,” said Sébastien Sauvé, a professor of environmental chemistry at Université de Montréal who reviewed a summary of the documents obtained by the IJB.

“That’s the part that really hurts the most to me: people could have taken some steps to reduce their exposure, had they known,” Sauvé said.

The records, obtained using access to information law, include internal emails, test results, letters between government officials and internal DND reports.

“Forever chemicals” — scientifically called PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) — get their nickname from their resistance to destruction and ability to linger in the environment and human bodies for years without breaking down.

In North Bay, the toxic chemicals were released in firefighting foam during training drills held at the local airport and military base from the 1970s to the 1990s. Both facilities sit upstream of water wells that supply some local homes and the municipal water supply, which flows into taps across the city.

Even today, North Bay locals still grapple with levels of forever chemicals that often make their drinking water unsafe, according to the current federal Health Canada water objective for PFAS of 30 nanograms per litre (ng/L). In North Bay, DND adheres only to a less rigid provincial safety guidance of 70 ng/L, creating uncertainty for residents whose readings fall between the two different safety standards.

In a statement, DND spokesperson Cheryl Forrest said that the department had detected PFAS in surface water in North Bay in 2012. (“Surface water” refers to natural bodies of water in the area.)

However, she said DND had not recognized these surface-water test results as a threat to drinking water, because PFAS guidelines for surface water were not yet available to help authorities understand the results.

“Between 2012 and 2016, information and technical awareness and expertise on how to best manage PFAS was limited and evolving,” she said, adding that DND has regularly consulted with Environment Canada and government experts on managing PFAS.

“In North Bay, as soon as the potential risks and impacts to drinking water were recognized, DND contacted local and provincial officials to develop and implement a drinking water and expanded environmental monitoring program in the area and to offer sampling to residents in the area of concern,” the statement adds.

Experts call the government’s failure to inform the public a damaging abdication of its duty.

Revelations in the new documents “erode trust in our public system’s ability to oversee the health and safety of Canadians,” said Miriam Diamond, a leading forever chemicals expert at the University of Toronto.

“They had knowledge of elevated levels in surface water running downstream of the airport. The prudent thing would have been to test the drinking water.”

Locals living in North Bay’s contamination hot spots said that even after being alerted to the issue in 2017, they were not told that water testing near their homes years earlier — sometimes steps from their doors — had flagged alarmingly high levels of toxic chemicals.

Phil Arens, who bought a property on an affected local stream called Lees Creek in June 2013, said the backyard waterway — which he had grown up around — had been a major selling point. Little did he know he had made his purchase a year after the federal government had logged high levels of forever chemicals in the creek.

“I was drinking out of the creek since I was four years old,” Arens said. “I was full-on swimming in the creek … If they told me the creek had PFAS in it and I couldn’t drink the water, there’s no way I would have bought this house.”

Today, Arens’s home water well is contaminated with the same chemicals that taint the creek and other residential wells.

He said it made him angry to learn that the government knew for years that the water contained dangerous levels of chemicals. “When you have no potable water, it makes your property worth zero,” he said. “I’m trapped. I don’t want to live here anymore.”

Among the documents obtained by the IJB are numerous letters written by then-North Bay mayor Al McDonald to federal officials between 2018 and 2021.

Exasperated by the government’s lack of action on cleaning up the affected water supply, McDonald wrote to federal ministers and then-prime minister Justin Trudeau, demanding action.

“Our citizens’ health and safety is being ignored,” McDonald wrote to Trudeau in 2021. “The Government of Canada has known for years of this health situation and has not taken any real action to protect our citizens from this health risk.”

The current Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.

Today, McDonald says his efforts at the time were in vain because the city’s drinking water still hasn’t been cleaned up.

“We lost in the end,” McDonald said. “When I turn the tap on, I just see everybody in North Bay drinking that water … If people really knew how government worked, it would scare them.”

From the 1970s to the 1990s, DND firefighters staged training exercises at Jack Garland airport, which involved dousing fires with aqueous firefighting foam. The foam contained the same chemicals that continue to plague North Bay to this day.

Forever chemicals are present in a plethora of products, from nonstick pans to takeout containers, but some of Canada’s most troublesome hot spots are areas where firefighting foams have been used.

After being sprayed on fires, the foam leached into soil and water surrounding the airport and air force base, called 22 Wing. The tainted water then flowed downhill towards the city, contaminating creeks, wells, residential properties and Trout Lake, the main source for the city’s drinking water.

Residents long believed, based on media reports and official statements, that PFAS were first discovered in Lees Creek in either late 2016 and early 2017. Some residents told the IJB that in February 2017, federal officials knocked on their doors to advise them of the potential threat and to offer bottled water if their tap water tested above limits.

But a previously undisclosed 2016 report, written by the Royal Military College, shows a discovery of elevated PFAS dating back to 2012.

The report, which reviewed local PFAS test results, shows a DND sprinkler system containing PFAS had leaked, prompting officials to test Lees Creek. One test was placed downstream of the creek while another was placed upstream, closer to the airport and military base.

“Significantly higher concentrations were found (upstream) … indicating that additional PFAS sources were present and impacting Lees Creek at upgradient locations,” reads the report.

The report shows that military officials found that decades of training activity with firefighting foam at the airport had been contaminating the creek with PFAS over the long term. It specifically points to elevated levels at “several former firefighting training facilities, a fire hall and a mechanical shop located on the main portion of the base.”

Between 2012 and 2016, DND tested Lees Creek 18 times according to the report — often within 100 metres of local homes that used the creek and nearby groundwater for drinking water.

At least five of those surface water tests exceeded the federal Health Canada guidance values for drinking water at the time – 600 ng/L — for one type of PFAS. Readings for all types of PFAS combined reached as high as 1,600 ng/L, according to data obtained by the IJB.

That level is more than 50 times Health Canada’s current PFAS threshold of 30 ng/L and many times higher than the current Ontario standard.

Despite such alarming levels, a July 2013 DND internal memo shows officials did not feel the department had an “obligation to remediate the (PFAS) contamination, as the (PFAS) were used in accordance with the laws and accepted practices of the time.”

DND initially told the IJB that it could not comment on an “unidentified memo.” The IJB sent the full text of the memo to DND, but it did the department did not respond further.

Beginning in 2014, records show DND also conducted more than 20 tests near the military base, north of Lees Creek. More than half of those surface water tests failed the drinking water guidance values of the time.

In December 2016, DND informed the city and local health unit about the contamination. Two months later, in February 2017, officials finally disclosed publicly that contaminated water in North Bay could pose a threat to the population.

Joanne Penney lives in a bungalow on Carmichael Drive, which runs right along the edges of the military base where some of the PFAS samples were taken.

For years, she has noticed her property floods with water she says is coming from the base. Sometimes, she says, the water would take on a strange orange hue and foam up.

“I know we had it in our backyard,” where her drilled water well is also located, said the 59-year-old retiree. “The military used to practise there and … you’d have foam sometimes.”

The IJB found that DND tested surface water less than 100 metres from Penney’s backyard at least seven times beginning in April, 2014. One sample from October that year exceeded the then-Health Canada drinking water guidelines of 600 ng/L.

Told about the test results by the IJB, Penney called it “disgusting” that DND never revealed those tests to her. “Why didn’t they? …

They hide everything, so what are you going to do?”

Penney, who was diagnosed with breast cancer about five years ago, wonders whether environmental factors might have impacted her diagnosis, though that is not known.  She says she has struggled to find answers.

In a response to questions about undisclosed testing near the airport and the base, DND spokesperson Forrest said that at the time, around 2012, groundwater data “did not suggest the presence of significant groundwater impacts in the area that could affect private wells.”

“The high mobility of PFAS and its potential to travel long distances and move between surface water and groundwater to affect drinking water resources were not yet understood by the scientific community at that time and the importance of this possible connection was not expected based on our experience with traditional contaminants,” she added.

Liza Vandermeer, a former North Bay supervisor at the provincial Ministry of the Environment, said DND’s response was grossly inadequate, calling its overall handling of the situation “sloppy work.”

Citing the example of surface water contamination found by DND at Lees Creek, she said it would not take “rocket science” to figure out that the nearby drinking water was in danger. “The creek comes out less than a kilometre from the city’s drinking water intake,” she said.

“They’re not supposed to sit on the information until they know for sure whether or not it’s significant,” she said. “They’re supposed to be proactive. So them saying that they spent four years trying to figure out whether it was potentially risky, that’s nonsense.”

Ontario’s Environmental Protection Act states that anyone who causes the spill of a pollutant must immediately notify the province and the local government.

In its statement to the IJB, DND said it informed local and provincial officials “as soon as the potential risks and impacts to drinking water were recognized.”

But local and regional officials now say DND kept its 2012 contamination discovery secret.

Dr. Carol Zimbalatti, the medical officer of health for the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit , called DND’s almost five-year delay in disclosing elevated levels of forever chemicals to her office “concerning.”

“The lack of transparency and the fact that it impeded efforts to act, to mediate, to inform,” delayed the response of the city, the health unit and residents, she said.

The revelations have also complicated the relationship between the regional health office and DND, which are partners in the efforts to ensure public safety, she said.

“It is a little bit more difficult when the trust isn’t necessarily there,” Zimbalatti said. “When there isn’t trust, it makes conversations a bit more fraught, when you’re not sure of the level of transparency.”

The City of North Bay said it was not informed at the time of the 2012 discovery, and only became aware of the contamination in late 2016.

“At the time, the city understood that PFAS contamination had been identified in 2016,” said city spokesperson Gord Young in a statement. “From the outset, the city has acted in good faith and with the best interests of the community in mind, while navigating a complex situation it did not create.”

Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, which is responsible for enforcing drinking water standards in the province, did not respond to questions about when ministry officials learned of the contamination.

Vandermeer, who once was an investigator at the Ministry of the Environment, where she was responsible for probing and prosecuting environmental offences, added:

“Anybody who works in environmental research or enforcement knows that if there’s a groundwater plume of contamination moving towards private wells, that the conscientious and responsible thing to do is to approach those property owners.

“These people are paid by the taxpayer to protect us, and they didn’t do their job. There was a cover-up and it’s unethical and I’m absolutely appalled, to be honest.”

DND did not respond to a question on whether it knew that several local homes drew drinking water directly from surface water found to be contaminated.

Kerrie Blaise, an environmental lawyer based in North Bay, said the DND delay in acknowledging the PFAS crisis surrounding the base and airport is “an environmental injustice.”

“That’s where you have a violation of a protection that is in place,” she said.

When the city finally learned its water was contaminated with PFAS, the biggest change was felt by the dozens of households that draw their drinking water from underground wells in the area south of the airport.

Some residents heard a knock on their doors from government officials who told them not to consume their water while their taps were tested for PFAS.

“Why is the military here?” Jennifer Arens recalls thinking when she saw a man in an army uniform step out of a military vehicle in the Arens’ driveway in 2017.

“Ever since they showed up that night, it’s been a stress weighing on us that we can’t drink our water. They have no solution for us besides dropping bottles of water off for the rest of our lives.”

DND said in its response to the IJB that it had provided bottled water to residents who had elevated PFAS levels, or had connected them to municipal water supplies or PFAS treatment systems at no cost. A 2021 document seen by the IJB indicates five homes were connected to the municipal supply in 2017.

Two residents spoken to by the IJB said they had been offered treatment systems but had not accepted them because they said a five-year limit had been attached to their guaranteed maintenance. None of the residents spoken to by the IJB had been connected to the local water supply.

And although DND offered free bottled water to North Bay households whose PFAS measurements exceeded government limits for drinking water, those limits quickly became outdated.

In 2017, when the disclosure was made to North Bay, the federal Health Canada guideline for drinking water concerned only two well-known types of PFAS — a limit of 600 ng/L of PFOS and 200 ng/L of PFOA.

The same year, Ontario brought in a much lower guideline of 70 ng/L for a total of 11 different types of PFAS. DND, however, persisted with the old federal Health Canada guidelines, and only adopted the Ontario guidelines four years later, in 2021. Once they did, more than a dozen homes were newly considered to be contaminated, in addition to five that had previously exceeded the old guidelines.

Then, last year, Health Canada unveiled the most stringent federal threshold to date: 30 ng/L for 25 different types of PFAS. DND has not yet adopted this threshold, and almost all North Bay tap water now exceeds these levels.

Today, many residents describe feeling like they live in a grey zone because they have water with contamination levels above the current federal Health Canada threshold but within the provincial limit that DND now adheres to.

Every once in a while, DND writes to residents whose tests fall within the provincial safety guideline of 70 ng/L. DND says it follows this level, rather than the stricter federal guideline of 30 ng/L, because the province has jurisdiction over the area.

“That’s like their get out of jail card,” says Joan Buckolz, who has lived south of the airport for more than 40 years. “It’s just the game they play.

In an example of the confusion faced by residents, an October 2022 test showed Buckolz’s drinking water well had a PFAS level of 40 ng/L, which at that time did not exceed provincial or federal guidelines. It still does not exceed the province’s threshold, but now exceeds Health Canada’s stricter guideline, which was introduced later.

Buckolz, who spends her own money on bottled water for her house, says the government’s response has been “too slow, too little.”

“It’s a catch-22,” she said. “You’re waiting for the limits to change because you keep hearing they’re going to change … until they do, they’re telling you everything’s all right.”

More than a year ago, Joanne Penney says DND told her its testing had logged PFAS levels in her drinking water that were within provincial guidelines. Since then, it has stopped testing.

Still, she and her husband spend hundreds of dollars on bottled water every month.

“We don’t even know if they’re telling us the truth,” she said. “We’re in a limbo.”

In a statement, Health Canada spokesperson Joshua Coke said that while the department creates health guidelines for drinking water quality, “provinces and territories … are responsible for implementing and regulating drinking water safety.”

“The drinking water objective represents a benchmark for all jurisdictions to strive towards; Health Canada recognizes that achieving the objective may take time given the technical complexity and cost of measuring and managing PFAS.”

For those residents whose water exceeds the provincial guidance levels, DND’s weekly bottled water deliveries are a reminder of the health threat surrounding their properties.

Dave Atkins says he can’t sell his house in good conscience because of the PFAS in his water well. He wasn’t surprised when reporters told him that tests 150 metres from his home found high levels of PFAS years before he was told.

“That’s the military for you. You’re on a need-to-know basis,” he said. “Even though we needed to know.”

Today, forever chemicals continue to flow down Lees Creek into Trout Lake, where they enter the municipal water supply and contaminate taps across the city. It’s a problem DND’s bottled water deliveries haven’t fixed.

When former North Bay mayor Al McDonald looks back on the letters he wrote to federal government officials between 2018 and 2021, he recalls the tumultuous – and failed – battle for accountability.

“I wanted the chemicals removed from our drinking water,” he told the IJB.

In a March 2018 letter to then-minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan, McDonald said he felt “let down” and “summarily dismissed” by DND officials’ lack of response.

In a letter he later wrote to Trudeau, he said, “We understand that there is additional and significant information and studies regarding this file held by the Federal Government that is not being shared … I trust that you agree (that) to knowingly allow this contamination at the source to continue without remediation is unacceptable.”

In 2021, DND and the city struck a $20-million deal to clean up the soil at the airport.

“It felt like a victory in a battle, in a war that we lost,” McDonald said.

The most recently released testing data shows the city’s municipal water supply remains above the federal PFAS guideline of 30 ng/L but below Ontario’s standards.

Work to remediate the airport didn’t begin until last year, according to local media reports . It is not expected to lessen PFAS levels for nearly another decade, one official recently told the Globe and Mail.

The city has also requested federal funding to design and upgrade the water treatment facility to filter PFAS. The project would cost more than $150 million, the city said, adding that the full cost of addressing PFAS could reach 10 times its annual water and wastewater budget.

“The City believes the federal government has a clear responsibility to fund these efforts and expects that support will continue,” the city told the IJB in a statement. It said it has received no confirmation from DND regarding funding for the treatment plant overhaul.

DND confirmed it had received a request for financial assistance for a PFAS treatment system. It did not say whether any such funding has or will be granted. 

McDonald says the contaminated water he’s been drinking for most of his life provides a haunting reminder of what he ultimately failed to achieve.

“I think it’s way too late for me,” he said. “I think it’s probably way too late for people that have been drinking it for 20, 30 years. But that five-year-old that walks over and puts a glass under a tap and starts drinking it … That’s what I think about.”

— With files from Anu Singh, Jacqueline Newsome, Wendy-Ann Clarke, Olivia Harbin, Amber Ranson, Matisse Chik, Tomi Joseph-Raji and Sahaana Ranganathan.

(Main photo: Lees Creek, by Peter J. Thompson)

The Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health is a collaborative investigative newsroom supported by Postmedia that partners with academics, researchers and journalists while training the next generation of investigative reporters.