Chronicles: Earthquake and tidal wave: the terrible twins of destruction
LIVING, Page 12
International Guitar Night coming to Duncan with masters of music
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JUST LIKE MAGIC!
Vandals dump unknown liquid at disputed site LEXI BAINAS CITIZEN
Lovely assistant Meggie Stylez appears by magic during an exciting show by illusionist Darren Charles at Cobble Hill Hall last Saturday night. Charles is holding three more shows in coming weeks and hopes to collect donations of food for local foodbanks as well. See story and pictures on page 16. [LEXI BAINAS/CITIZEN]
Finding a suspicious chemical on the controversial Stebbings Road landfill site stopped work Monday morning, and has site operators decrying the act of vandalism. “We discovered it at 9:30 a.m. It completely changed the day for us; 50 per cent of my staff were onto it,” said Todd Mizuik, of South Island Resource Management Ltd. (SIRM), the company that is operating the contaminated soil dumpsite. Monday began with its usual daily perimeter walk. “On our walk-through, around 9 o’clock, one of our engineers discovered a large quantity of yellow staining, literally right next to the fence line on our western property line. It’s an area that’s not very active so there’d be no real way of knowing anything was there until you walked up to it,” he said. SIRM sprang into emergency mode right away, following a prescribed plan of action for dealing with an unknown substance. But, the incident is disturbing, Mizuik said. “It’s the fear that this puts into my staff, who have to deal with unknown foreign substances being brought onto the property, above and beyond the disregard for our environment. It’s mali-
KEEP YOUR FAMILY SAFE! Lint buildup in your dryer vent can lead to
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
• MOLD GROWTH • CARBON MONOXIDE POISONING • FIRE!
cious, yes, and it’s wrong, yes, and you’re interfering with a legitimate business but, more importantly, I don’t like the fear in the community and among my staff. I think this is absolutely reprehensible. That’s the story. This kind of stuff has to stop,” he said. The discovery was some kind of yellow substance. “It didn’t look like pee. It was a very strong concentration and a very strong yellow-green colour.” It was poured on top of snow. “There were three or four fairly strong concentrated areas. If it was powder, I would suggest it was in the range of 500 ml to a litre. It was a stain of about nine to 10 feet. The material was benign in that there was no vapour or odour. But there are a lot of chemicals in the world that do not have those characteristics until they start to react with something else such as water,” he said. Immediately upon its discovery, workers cordoned off the area and took a sample. “The protocols for unknown substances are usually more extreme than if we have identifiers that lead us on how to approach it.” Dealing with a possible biomedical hazard meant that workers had to wear Kevlar suits. See COMPANY, Page 11
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