A group of residents from Port Colborne, Ont., have filed a class-action lawsuit against
Situated west of Buffalo on the northern shore of Lake Erie, Port Colborne is the location of a metal refinery owned and operated by Inco since 1918.
The claimants are alleging soil on their Port Colborne properties contains “extremely high” levels of cancer-causing nickel-oxide contamination — up to 460 times above normal within a 159 sq.-km area, thus affecting more than 20,000 people.
The group, which is represented by Toronto-based law firm Daoust Vukovich Baker-Sigal Banka, is seeking damages of $750,000. They accuse Inco and government officials of having known about the problem for a number of years but doing little to resolve it.
Inco, in turn, describes the suit as being “without merit” and says it will vigorously defend itself.
Still, the company says it has been working with both the city and the ministry to assess whether any serious health and related issues exist in connection with the operating history of its refinery.
“We accept responsibility for concentrates in the surface soil and have pledged to work with the community to assess the risk and implement appropriate remediation,” Inco President Scott Hand told analysts during a conference call. “Independent research verifies there is no risk to human health on this level of concentration.”
The company has also been working with the ministry concerning unrelated landfill activities in the area dating back to the early 1900s, and possible sources of such landfill. Inco says these sources cannot be determined at present.
Inco’s Port Colborne refinery began refining nickel in 1918 and, over time, added refining capacity for cobalt and platinum group metals. Since 1995, the refinery has only processed cobalt.
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