SARNIA, ONT.—In the hours before daylight on Feb. 8, 2014, toxic benzene leaking from a Sarnia chemical plant wafted toward the homes of the Sherwood Village neighbourhood in the shadow of the city’s industrial stacks.

“Yeah, I can smell it,” muttered Dwayne DeBruyne, a plant employee at the Plains Midstream Canada chemical plant who reported the incident just after 6 a.m. to a provincial government hotline for spills.

“So it’s a spill?” the operator from the Spills Action Centre in Toronto is heard asking on a recording of the call, obtained through a freedom-of-information request.

“I wouldn’t classify it as a spill,” he says. “It’s an odour release.”

“I mean, it sounds like a spill to me,” she counters.

DeBruyne concedes with a slight laugh, “OK, we’ll call it a spill … It’s very contained.”

Not so, government records show.

Benzene — which causes cancer at high levels of long-term exposure — was already spreading.

Air quality measurements taken over a few minutes that morning by an independent company hired by Plains Midstream Canada measured benzene levels at 50 parts per billion.

If sustained over 30 minutes, that level would have been 22 times the provincial standard in place today.

This government incident report — along with more than 500 others from 2014 and 2015 — was obtained by a national investigation involving the Toronto Star, Global News and journalism schools at Concordia and Ryerson through freedom-of-information requests.

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The documents reveal the details of industrial leaks in Sarnia’s Chemical Valley that released a range of emissions — from a valve left open for three months venting hydrocarbons in 2014 to particulate matter from a boiler stack falling onto cars that year, to a two-hour leak of hydrogen sulphide from tanks in 2015.

Only one public warning has been issued for an industrial incident through the city’s official alert system since it began in 2014. And the ministry has laid charges in four cases in the Sarnia area since January 2013. (One of those was a leak at an Imperial Oil plant in Sarnia the day before the Plains Midstream spill that triggered a $812,500 fine and criticism from residents and the mayor about insufficient public warning.)

“It seems like government oversight is lacking,” says Joyce McLean, senior policy adviser with Ontario’s environment ministry from 1990-95, who reviewed a dozen incident reports.

“There’s basically a toxic soup … Every time that there is an exceedance or a spill, the ministry should be paying attention and prosecuting where necessary. It seems to me … the ministry fell short of their responsibility.”

Around midday Feb. 8, 2014, benzene readings more than a kilometre from Plains Midstream Canada remained twice the current standard if measured for a half-hour, according to the incident report.

The WHO calls benzene “carcinogenic to humans,” and says, “no safe level of exposure can be recommended.”

But Sarnia residents, including those living and working in the immediate vicinity, were never told what leaked that morning.

“First I’ve heard of it,” said Mickey Cvejich, a manager at a motorcycle store nearby. “Completely shocked, I had no idea.”

Reporters visited more than two dozen homes surrounding the plants earlier this year; only one person — who said she worked in health and safety but wouldn’t comment further — knew about that day. The ministry did not investigate or lay charges.

“The incident did not warrant referral to the ministry’s investigations and enforcement branch,” reads a statement from a ministry spokesperson. The spill fell below the regulator’s “emergency screening value” for benzene.

A written response from Plains Midstream Canada says: “There were no injuries or air safety concerns during the event and at no time was there a risk to the public … Third party air monitors … continued to indicate that the air remained safe.”

Dean Edwardson, spokesperson for the Sarnia-Lambton Environmental Association — a non-profit co-operative of 20 industrial manufacturers — says industry is doing all it can to “limit the amount of benzene that might be coming from our facilities.

“We have shown continuous improvement in reduction of volatile organic hydrocarbons, including benzene, over the last number of years. Without regulatory intervention, our companies have strived and made progress in the area.”

Still, newly appointed Liberal Environment Minister Chris Ballard acknowledges the air issues.

“I am so concerned about what I hear that’s happening in this community. This is not right.”

Several experts who reviewed the details of the incident questioned the industry and government response.

Chris Stockwell, Ontario’s Conservative environment minister from 2002-03, called the benzene readings “alarming,” requiring an inspection and possibly charges. “I can’t explain why this would happen frankly.”

Bud Wildman, the NDP minister from 1993-95, said the spill should have raised alarms in the ministry.

“This is the kind of incident where the ministry staff should be on site and should be involved in the investigation,” he said. “Benzene is a very, very toxic substance.”

The ministry did not send an inspector to investigate the site, records show.

“That’s pathetic,” says Elaine MacDonald, an environmental engineer with EcoJustice, who also reviewed the incident report. “They got a free pass, definitely. There seem to be a lot of free passes in Sarnia.”

Some days, you can smell Chemical Valley before you see it.

The odour of chemicals and rotten eggs grows more pungent as you approach the stacks and tanks that dominate the skyline.

Behind the fences of massive industrial plants are companies such as Imperial Oil, Shell Canada, Suncor Energy and Plains Midstream — part of an industry that emerged in the late 19th century when oil was discovered in Oil Springs, about 40 kilometres from Sarnia.

Today, 57 facilities are registered as polluters with the Canadian and U.S. governments, all within 25 kilometres of Sarnia.

The tidy rows of brick homes that comprise south-end neighbourhoods sit across the street, or the tracks, from tanks and flare stacks.

Not far from that neighbourhood is the sprawling Aamjiwnaang First Nation, surrounded on three sides by Chemical Valley. An unlucky swing of a bat on a nearby field would send a baseball behind a fence where the industrial stacks stand.

If current zoning laws had existed when many of these refineries were built, some of the petrochemical facilities wouldn’t be where they are.

“This is a historic failure,” said Gord Miller, former provincial environmental commissioner, on the release of his 2014 annual report. “Current land use rules would not allow such a concentration of industry so close to a residential community.”

Sarnia’s oil and gas companies are required to report nearly every pollutant spill — minor incidents, accidents and maintenance issues — to the environment ministry.

A city-operated, industry-funded alert system called myCNN is designed to reach tens of thousands of people in minutes through electronic messages. In the three years since it began, it’s been used once for an industrial spill.

“I can’t imagine there’s only been one incident that people should be drawing their attention to in three years,” says city councillor Brian White. “We have a responsibility to inform people.”

Cal Gardner, Sarnia’s emergency management co-ordinator, says industry has the initial responsibility of notifying the city of incidents.

“There is discretion from industry that we have to follow,” he said. “They are the ones at the control, they are the ones doing the monitoring, they are the ones that are going to be charged and fined if they are at fault for failing to notify. But we also have municipal fire departments that go and respond and monitor and check in as well and we also make sure Spills Action Centre is notified.”

The province has been tackling air quality in Sarnia, says Ballard.

He noted benzene levels in Sarnia have dropped significantly in 25 years. And last year, Canada’s toughest benzene emission standards came into effect in Ontario.

“Everything that we’re made aware of, we respond to in some way. But it’s a scaled response. I mean if someone spills a toxic material on the ground it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to face a charge, right?

“We need to continue to drive (pollutant levels) down.”

But cities across Ontario are struggling to meet the new standard. Last year, when it came in, an industry-operated air monitor in Sarnia registered the highest annual benzene level in three years, nearly four times the new limit of .45 micrograms per cubic metre.

A 2016 ministry report on petroleum refining standards found three Sarnia facilities in the top four per cent of 147 facilities surveyed in the U.S. and Ontario for benzene levels measured at the facility property line. That report indicates five of six Ontario petroleum refineries were estimated to be emitting three to 10 times the new annual standard.

The industry has argued the new standard is so “restrictive” it needs time to upgrade equipment and several facilities have been given an amnesty on the new targets.

“Our companies have engaged . . . in a number of measures for the reduction of benzene using best available technology,” says Edwardson, of the industry association.

EcoJustice’s MacDonald says the delays amount to a “loophole” for industry.

Meanwhile, troubling air quality readings persist.

In the First Nation of Aamjiwnaang, a mobile unit operated by the ministry that tests air monthly has captured benzene spikes. On April 26, 2016, for example, benzene levels were logged at 161 micrograms per cubic metre — 23 times Ontario’s current standard for a half-hour.

Ballard acknowledges there is much work to do before industry in Sarnia reaches provincial emission standards.

“We have to have that low goal and we have to be very clear . . . that our goal is year-over-year reductions.”

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Weekly, often daily, Ada Lockridge watches smoke or flames billow from the plants that surround her house in Aamjiwnaang. She thinks it is slowly eating away at her health.

“If I fed you arsenic every day… I’m poisoning you. You could charge me,” she says. “These companies, they’re leaking things everyday, and slowly doing harm, and they just seem to be getting a slap on the wrist or nothing at all. Because we have to prove it. Then we have to prove which company. But there’s so many, how can you point out one?”

There is much speculation, but little clarity, on the impact the concentration of refineries and plants has on the health of city residents.

“Obviously, the real question is do [petrochemical companies] alert when there’s an issue?” says Ron Smith, a one-time software programmer at Suncor, now a Sarnia police employee and president of the Sarnia Historical Society. “I really believe that they do. I think there’s a lot of ramifications and fines for them not to . . . Maybe I’ve got the glasses on incorrectly, where I’m thinking … they’re all playing by the same rules.”

When Smith spoke, his wife was expecting their first child. His home is about two kilometres from an Imperial Oil plant.

“I just hope that they’re good corporate citizens and they are doing that. And if not, then there’s the provincial and federal governments that have things in place that manage them and address them if they’re not following those guidelines, you know?”

Since 2007, a group called the Lambton Community Health Study, which includes the county’s medical officer of health, has sought funding for an independent study on the city’s air and water and any public health effects. It was never done.

While industry has offered funding, the province and federal governments have not.

A modest survey released by the group, based on a phone poll of 500 residents, an online survey and five open houses in 2010 and 2011, found concerns.

About 80 per cent felt pollution from local industries was causing health problems for them or their families, most commonly citing cancer or respiratory health. A “predominant” theme in the findings: “a need for better communication and increased transparency on the part of industry.”

Ballard said he would consider funding an independent study.

The public data that exists is inconclusive. Hospitalization rates for respiratory problems are higher in Sarnia and Aamjiwnaang than nearby Windsor and London. There are more lung cancer cases and mesothelioma than the Ontario average, in part because of the region’s asbestos legacy.

But leukemia and blood cancer rates are consistent with the rest of Ontario.

Critics say the data, collected at the county level, misses the impact on people in the immediate vicinity of Chemical Valley.

“The highly exposed population, their risk is diluted,” says Jim Brophy, former executive director of Sarnia’s Occupational Health Clinic.

“Leukemia incidence and lymphoma incidence among the industrial workers could be through the roof but you wouldn’t see it if they’re all in the population as a whole.”

His reading of available scientific evidence is that exposures in Sarnia “pose a cancer risk to the general population and may even be more profoundly dangerous for children or pregnant women,” he says.

“This idea that (government is) on guard and they’re watching what’s going on and they’re protecting people from harm, this is really a naive view.”

Having a First Nation community next to gas, oil and chemical plants amounts to “environmental racism,” he says.

“There’s no way that a white community would be up against the fence line with one of the largest industrial concentrations in the country,” he says. “Anybody who is informed on this issue knows how dangerous this really is.”

Robert Cribb can be reached at rcribb@thestar.ca

Watch Oct. 14 at 7 p.m. on Global

The Price of Oil series is the result of the largest ever collaboration of journalists in Canada, from the Toronto Star, Global News, the National Observer and journalism schools at Concordia, Ryerson, Regina and UBC.

Writers/Reporters:

Robert Cribb Toronto Star

Carolyn Jarvis Global News

Emma McIntosh Ryerson University School of Journalism

Sawyer Bogdan Ryerson University School of Journalism

Morgan Bocknek Ryerson University School of Journalism

Robert Mackenzie Ryerson University School of Journalism

Senior Researchers:

Patti Sonntag, Michener Awards Foundation

Sandra Bartlett, Global News

Researchers:

Sean Craig, Global News

Stephanie Gordon, Global News

Fallon Hewitt, Global News

Nathan Sing, Global News

Claire Loewen, Concordia University Department of Journalism

Michael Wrobel, Concordia University Department of Journalism

Chris Aitkens, Concordia University Department of Journalism

Jeremy Glass-Pilon, Concordia University Department of Journalism

Lucas Napier-Macdonald, Concordia University Department of Journalism

Data analyst:

Patrick Cain, Global News

Series Producer:

Patti Sonntag, Michener Fellow/Concordia University