Ron Plain will most likely be dead in 12 months. In November 2016, his doctors diagnosed him with a rare form of cancer that prevents the blood cells in his bone marrow from maturing. The disease is part of a group called myelodysplastic syndromes, or MDS, and his case is terminal. Nearly as punishing as death, in his case, is the journey there. “Your bone marrow kind of looks like an Aero bar, full of bubbles,” he says, teeing up a contrasting simile: “Mine lays flat and it looks kind of like a snakeskin going down.” The result of his condition is constant fatigue, he says, because his bone marrow doesn’t have the oxygen concentration that it should. Worse yet, many of the drugs that could be used to help with the pain and fatigue that he suffers from are potentially bad for his bone marrow. “I’m a pharmaceutical experiment, I guess,” says Plain, who turned 55 in the hospital while awaiting his diagnosis. “We try to find something to stay aground as long as I can.” It’s an excruciating way to die: in varying states of languor and with pain that runs as deep as your bones until the very last exhale. “I get a blood transfusion every Tuesday, and then I go see my pain doctor, and I get 21 needles,” he says. “And then I come home and I’ve got the energy to maybe wash the dishes, take a break and relax for awhile, get up and sweep the floor, take a break. That’s my day. That’s my excitement. That’s what I can do.” But, in his routine, Plain has found “an acceptance, not a mourning.” And that acceptance comes, in part, because he saw this coming. Advertisement “We expected cancer,” he says. “Nobody was shocked. My wife and I sat there in the chair and said, ‘yeah we figured.’” Shape Created with Sketch. Tweet This They figured because of where they live. 23:05 Canada’s Toxic Secret: A troubling trend of leaks and spills in the Sarnia area Canada’s Toxic Secret: A troubling trend of leaks and spills in the Sarnia area WATCH: Carolyn Jarvis’ full documentary investigating a troubling trend of leaks and spills in the Sarnia area – and how it impacts the people who live nearby. Ron Plain, his wife and children live in Sarnia, Ont. He has spent the last 25 years living between the southwestern Ontario city and the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, a Chippewa community at the south end of Sarnia. With approximately 900 residents, the First Nation is a mix of bucolic and suburban calm that stretches over 1,250 hectares (3,100 acres) of groves, marshes and farmland. Tree canopies part for modest and welcoming 20th century homes. Aamjiwnaang’s band office is situated adjacent to a baseball field and the clack of ambitious batter swings echo against its walls on summer afternoons. But stand at home plate and extend your arm to left field like the most cocksure hitter, and you can see what Ron Plain says he saw coming. Across the street, immediately north, directly bordering Aamjiwnaang territory is a different kind of canopy: a mammoth industrial skyline, where smokestacks and flares lance shades of grey and orange upward through the blue and white hues of the clouds and sky above. Aamjiwnaang is situated at the heart of one of the largest petrochemical complexes in Canada. Major producers including Imperial Oil, Shell Canada, Suncor Energy, and Plains Midstream Canada all operate plants within walking distance. In total, there are 57 polluters registered with the Canadian and U.S. governments within 25 kilometres. (Michigan is across the St. Clair River.)

Here stands “Chemical Valley.” This is a story about living here. But here is not “Chemical Valley.” It’s not some nickname. Here is Aamjiwnaang and here is Sarnia, Ont. – the neighbouring city of over 72,000 that grew up in the 20th century and became an industrial powerhouse. Here are places that grapple with how to reconcile the past and the present of industry — which provide tens of thousands with their livelihoods — with the past and present of their communities — where some residents worry about what industrial pollution in their environment has meant for their health, and where the legacy of colonialism has left one First Nation community at the centre of what Ontario’s former environment commissioner called an “historic failure.” A joint investigation by Global News, the Toronto Star, Michener Awards Foundation and Concordia and Ryerson Universities has revealed significant concerns about whether the people who live in these communities, where the heavy concentration of industry means toxic chemical releases are routine, can expect due diligence from their government in alerting them to the possible risks they face. In this story you will learn: How over 500 government reports documenting industrial spills and leaks in the Sarnia region over a two-year period, obtained through Access to Information requests, raise concerns about government oversight of industry.

How the city’s alert system has only been used once to notify residents about an industrial spill since it was created.

How a 10-year effort to get a local health study to examine the impacts of the petrochemical industry on Sarnia and Aamjiwnaang failed to be completed, despite concerning research and locals who fear for their health.

How one determined member of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation is tracking life in the community in her own unique way. Advertisement At 3:25 p.m., in the middle of a frigid afternoon on Feb. 7, 2014, an alarm went off inside the Imperial Oil Refinery in Sarnia. A fuse leading to a heater had blown, causing a pipe to freeze and rupture, and over 500 kilograms of hydrocarbon gas spilled into the air. The plant went into lockdown, workers scurried to designated safe havens as the smell of gas drifted into nearby neighbourhoods. Residents reported burning eyes, dizziness and nausea. One woman on Facebook said the release “made my children start coughing and get headaches,” another observed that she suffered a “headache” and “now I can’t stop vomiting.” Sarnia’s hospital declared a “code grey,” closing its air intake and postponing a surgery. Imperial notified Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment of the rupture and put out a press release. And that was that. At 8:28 p.m. an all-clear was issued. Local air monitoring in Sarnia hadn’t detected any “unsafe levels.” But what most residents didn’t know was that another spill was already underway. At six in the morning the next day, Feb. 8, Dwayne Debruyne of Plains Midstream Canada phoned the local office of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment’s Spills Action Centre, the province’s hub for reporting the release of pollutants. Documents show odour complaints, which the fire department suspected were coming from Plains Midstream, were received at 2:45 p.m. and 5:49 p.m. on the previous afternoon, as the city responded to the leak at Imperial. But Plains Midstream didn’t call the Ministry to report a spill until 15 hours later. Plains Midstream defends it didn’t have to, since the volume released Feb. 7 did not meet reporting thresholds. “There’s a floating roof in the tank … and some of the product inside, condensate, has leaked on to the roof,” Debruyne said on the call, Feb. 8. “It’s still in the tank. I wouldn’t classify it as a spill. It’s just on the roof instead of being in the tank.” Carly Weir, the Ministry of the Environment employee who answered the call, wasn’t so sure. “I mean it sounds like a spill to me,” she replied. “I don’t know.” “It is an odour release, yes,” responded Debruyne. “OK, so it’s a spill.” “OK, we’ll call it a spill,” Weir said. Shape Created with Sketch. Tweet This In a statement, Plains Midstream said there were no air safety concerns as a result of the incident, and at no time was the public at risk. The company said the spill was “contained” and it did not report the incident until Feb. 8 because the spill did not meet “Ontario reporting thresholds.” The company also says it fixed the cause of the spill. But just over a kilometre away, outside the local Harley Davidson dealership, air monitoring conducted by a third party, hired by Plains Midstream, showed the level of benzene, a known carcinogen reached 50 parts per billion. The sample was only taken over a few minutes, but if it persisted for half an hour, it would have been 22 times the provincial half-hour standard that’s in effect today. The Ontario government had not yet implemented the half-hour standard when the Plains Midstream incident occurred and the air samples taken are too short to determine the level of benzene over a half-hour period. Approximately four hours later, just down the street, the level of benzene was still twice today’s half-hour standard, if it was sustained for 30 minutes. “I actually went there Saturday morning,” said John Kingyens, the chief of Sarnia’s Fire Rescue Services. “And they had given me no indication that there was any problem.” The Ministry of the Environment was aware of the leak and a field report shows that the benzene levels were called in. However, no government official showed up. The ministry says it wasn’t necessary since the benzene levels were well below its emergency screening values. It also says, even today, Plains Midstream isn’t being held to the half-hour standard. “I shouldn’t laugh… that is pathetic,” said Elaine MacDonald, an environmental engineer with the environmental law charity EcoJustice. “That means no one actually went to the site and looked at it. Obviously, charges should have been laid. There’s absolutely no doubt. This is evidence of violation… they filled out a report and just left it.” Advertisement There was no investigation. Two former ministers of the environment noted their concern. “If we saw numbers this alarming, there would’ve been an inspection, there would’ve been an abatement plan put in place, and I guess there would’ve been charges,” said Chris Stockwell, a Progressive Conservative who was environment minister from 2002 to 2003. “This is the kind of incident where the ministry staff should be on site and should be involved in the investigation of what happened,” added Bud Wildman, a New Democrat who was environment minister from 1993 to 1995. Plains Midstream claims that the February 2014 spill did not pose any threat to the community. “There were no injuries or air safety concerns during the event and at no time was there a risk to the public,” the company said, in a statement. “Third-party air monitors set up at locations downwind and upwind of the plant continued to indicate that the air remained safe.” Incident reports, like the one which documents the Plains Midstream spill, are filed by the Ministry of the Environment every time a leak or spill is reported by a company. More than 500 incident reports from 2014 and 2015 were obtained for this investigation and point to a concerning regularity of spills and leaks in the Sarnia region – with a sometimes questionable government response.

A lack of government oversight? A 2014 incident report detailed an incident where 338 kilograms of ammonia was spilled, though it was not an exceedance. It received no field response from the ministry. A January 2016 report detailed a release of sulphurous gases that occurred during an unplanned shutdown, which “exceeded S02 emission to… boiler stack.” It received no field response either. A March 2014 incident report showed a valve was left open for three months “so the refinery fuel gas was being emitted straight to the atmosphere.” In this case, no field response, and no charges were laid. In fact, since January 2013, only four cases in the Sarnia area have resulted in charges from the Ministry of the Environment, despite the hundreds of spills reported. (One of those four cases was the Imperial Oil spill of Feb. 7, 2014, which resulted in an $812,000 fine. Imperial Oil did take steps to fix the problem that caused the leak.) “Well, if there are no consequences, there are no deterrents,” says Joyce McLean — who served as a senior policy adviser at the Ministry of the Environment for five years in the 1990s. Reviewing a handful of the incident reports she added, “I’d say, on the surface, it seems like government oversight is lacking.” For example, she notes the case of the ammonia release, all government communication was done over the phone, according to the incident report: “I think it’s kind of typical because without an active on the ground presence the Ministry of the Environment is relying on industry to tell them their woes, and their problems and their spills and whether they’re compliant.” The current Ontario Minister of the Environment, Chris Ballard, says the government’s reporting protocols are focused on responding to every spill, though not necessarily in person. “Those 500 reports, I will say that everything is responded to and I have asked this question of my staff and of the field staff,” he noted in an interview. “Everything that we’re made aware of, we respond to in some way. But it’s a scaled response.” “I would rather make sure businesses feel more comfortable reporting a spill so that we can educate them about how not to have that happen again than to have them so terrified that they don’t want to talk to authorities, that they try and hide,” said Ballard. A ministry spokesperson added that, in the last decade, the government has brought in 68 new or updated air standards and, while acknowledging that “more can be done to strengthen existing protections in certain areas” said that stricter standards have helped air quality in Sarnia “improve noticeably over the past 10 years.” And it’s true that the ministry has taken an aggressive stance, legislatively, on reducing emissions. One chemical in particular that has been targeted is benzene, the substance leaked by Plains Midstream in 2014 and a toxin that has been linked to leukemia and other cancers. Advertisement In July 2016, the Ontario government introduced the strictest benzene standard in the country, something the association that represents industry in Sarnia says is unrealistic. “We can’t meet that standard,” says Dean Edwardson, a spokesperson for the industry group, Sarnia-Lambton Environmental Association. “We’re going to do everything we can to limit the amount of benzene that might be coming from our facilities.” According to a 2016 government document, it’s estimated the refineries in Sarnia release three to 10 times the annual benzene limit. As a result, seven facilities (including petrochemical plants and refineries) were exempted from the new standard and were instead required to make equipment upgrades. In fact, Sarnia is not alone: most cities in Ontario didn’t come close to meeting the new annual level. However, in Sarnia the industry’s own air monitor recorded its highest annual benzene reading in three years, nearly four times the new limit, in 2016. And these new, stringent standards are said to be health-based, suggesting there is an acknowledged cost if they fail to be reached. Oil was first discovered in “Chemical Valley” in the late 19th century, and industry grew at a tremendous pace during the Second World War when Sarnia became a producer of synthetic rubber after the Allied Forces were cut off from rubber imports sourced in Eastern Asia. Today, the Sarnia region is a powerhouse in Canada’s petrochemical industries. Zoning laws were lax or non-existent for much of the industry’s development, which is why plants sit next to residential neighbourhoods in the city and in Aamjiwnaang. “This is a historic failure,” said Gord Miller, then Ontario’s environmental commissioner, upon 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. ” The City of Sarnia, including Aamjiwnaang, records more hospital admissions for respiratory illnesses than nearby Windsor and London, while the incidence of certain cancers, namely lung cancer and mesothelioma, exceeds the provincial average. This could be attributable to a legacy of asbestos exposure in the plants. Jim Brophy, who was at the frontline, dealing with those impacted by the asbestos exposure has seen as much disease and sickness in Sarnia as anyone. The former executive director of the Sarnia Occupational Health Clinic, who held the post from 1993 to 2008, is deeply critical of today’s state of affairs. “I don’t care what the Ministry of the Environment or Labour or Health says,” he added. “They would not move their families there. They wouldn’t move into the Aamjiwnaang community. Anybody who is informed on this issue knows how dangerous this really is.” “This is a classic example of environmental racism,” said Brophy. “There’s no question, this would never be tolerated in a white community.” But where the scale of the problem at hand might seem too daunting, too complex and slow-moving to resolve in one lifetime, Brophy sees hope. Or, rather, he’s put his hope in, who he calls, the “Joan of Arc of her community.”