HALIFAX—Staff and volunteers from the Ecology Action Centre (EAC) ventured to clean up discarded plastic from an urban beach Saturday morning, and ended up discovering a thick layer of congealed oil on the rocky shore, which they want to see investigated.

The Halifax-based environmental organization chose a small beach in Norris Cove as the site for a World Cleanup Day event because it had more plastic and other waste than most Halifax-area beaches.

“This is one of the dirtiest beaches I’ve ever encountered in the (Halifax Regional Municipality),” said EAC policy director Mark Butler.

He said his group scouted the Dartmouth location during high tide, and were surprised when they returned at low tide and saw what appeared to be evidence of an old oil spill.

Butler said there were several square metres of a “heavy, tarry, substance,” which he suspected to be bunker C, a heavy fuel oil often used by ships and for power generation.

Tufts Cove, where a Nova Scotia Power (NSP) generating station spilled more than 19,000 litres of oil in early August, is only about 100 metres away from Norris Cove.

NSP is still cleaning up from that spill, but it’s contained; NSP and Butler agree that is seems to be unrelated to the tarry evidence at Norris Cove.

Still, Butler said he notified NSP about the oil on Saturday morning.

Addison Dickerd, who works for Eastern Canada Response Corporation — the company that is cleaning up the Tufts Cove spill for NSP — told StarMetro that he met with the EAC on Saturday at the site.

He called it “historical background oiling,” and said that in Halifax Harbour there are “lots of historical spots you can go to find oil.”

When asked if it’s necessary to clean up historical oil, he said, “That’s really not up to me.”

NSP spokesperson Tiffany Chase echoed Dickerd’s assessment of the oil’s age, and added that NSP had already noted its presence more than a month ago.

“It had been previously observed by the clean-up team during our detailed inspections of the shoreline in the area next to Tufts Cove, and was noted as an area of unrelated, historic oiling in our approved Shoreline Clean-Plan,” she said via email.

Butler said he also notified Environment Canada about his findings, and he hopes the “appropriate authorities” will take action on an investigation.

“I understand that it’s weathered oil, but it’s a lot of it … It’s still toxic to marine life. You know in some cases maybe it’s better to leave it in place than have a highly disruptive cleanup operation, because it’s not an easy beach to access, but nonetheless we’d like to know – do an analysis of the oil and hear more from them about it,” Butler said.

Despite the surprise discovery, the beach cleanup went on as planned.

About 30 staff and volunteers turned out to the EAC event, which partnered with Greenpeace Canada, collecting waste for several hours and then lugging it in bags away from the beach to be sorted.

Greenpeace Canada planned to do a brand audit of the plastic to identify and call out the major corporations producing the most litter.

Brigid Rowan, co-chair of Greenpeace Canada’s board, said the audit was meant the bring the cleanup to the “next level.”

“What we’re trying to do is create a laundry list and shine a light on the corporations who are contributing to this plastic epidemic,” she said, adding that individual consumers should still do their part by recycling and refusing single-use plastics, but ultimately she’d like to see a major reduction in the production of plastic products.

She noted that there were single-use coffee cups and plastic grocery bags aplenty, and a “mountain” of plastic tampon applicators.

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Similar audits initiated by Greenpeace have taken place in other parts of the world, and three others were planned across Canada on Saturday.

The results of the audits are to be released in early October.

Rowan said the ultimate goal is to have the Canadian government ban single-use plastics.

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