“Consider sending MNRF with a message that we consider the MNRF now responsible for the site.”
He also suggested sending the findings to the PEOC, the Ministry of Environment and the MNRF. He told them the results were consistent with a thermogenic gas produced below the surface. Brown, the director of public works, updated municipal officials on the testing of the gas samples in an e-mail on July 22. Fire Chief Case offered them to several provincial ministries, too, but none took him up on his offer. This time, the hazmat team gathered gas samples for testing and they were sent to labs in Mississauga and Calgary and at the University of Windsor. on July 22, with gas readings once again back to zero. He scaled it back to cover just 15 Erie St. Mayor Canniff declared a second state of emergency the next day. Case’s actions and concerns.ĭarrin Canniff is mayor of Chatham-Kent, the municipality Wheatley is a part of. Municipal Fire Chief Chris Case repeatedly asked for assistance with the potentially volatile situation from numerous provincial agencies – the MNRF, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Municipal Affairs, the Provincial Emergency Operations Centre – but was in each case told it was beyond their scope and not their responsibility, according to an occupational health and safety report of the incident that catalogued Mr. “Everybody was scratching their heads, thinking, ‘What is going on here and why today? What’s different today than the past 100 years?’” Mr. that were drilled in 1897 and had been plugged back in the 1960s, but there was little information to explain the sudden elevation in gas levels. It appeared there were a number of wells near 15 Erie St. with files about some old gas wells in the area. Inspectors from Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) had arrived in town at around 8 p.m. Chatham-Kent’s director of public works, Ryan Brown, recalled a bewildering few days following that leak. The frustrating response from the province began immediately after the incident in early June. June 2 - 17, 2021 ‘What is going on here and why today?’ “I mean the proof of the pudding, as they say, is the place blew up. “Why didn’t they jump on it right away?” he said. And it would have been “10 times worse for members of the public” who encountered the gas with no gear. Timbers told The Globe the concentrations of H2S found on June 2 were “absolutely unacceptable and dangerous,” even for trained hazardous chemical workers with specialized protective equipment. The fact that The Pogue exploded after two high-level gas leaks could well boil down to a failure in oversight, due diligence and duty of care by the province, said Bill Timbers, an engineer and risk management consultant in Alberta. The limited action frustrated municipal officials.
The municipality was told that the province’s petroleum compliance inspectors could offer “commentary but not advice,” because a government lawyer had advised them against providing guidance, according to the documents. But the province was reluctant to deal with the issue, putting the onus on Chatham-Kent, which governs Wheatley and dozens of other mostly rural communities, and on the owner of the building. Municipal and provincial government documents and e-mails obtained by The Globe and Mail through freedom-of-information legislation reveal that the Municipality of Chatham-Kent repeatedly asked the Ontario government to step in and investigate the source of the toxic leaks, stressing the problem was beyond their resources and expertise. CHEN WANG AND JOHN SOPINSKI/the globe and mail, Source: chatham-kent golder
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