The Swan Hills Treatment Centre opened in 1987 to process a variety of materials, including household hazardous wastes and high-concentration PCBs.
The Swan Hills Treatment Centre was allowed to operate for a period of multiple years without meeting the mercury monitoring requirements of its permit, documents show. A hazardous waste processing facility owned by the Alberta government was granted permission by the same government to operate without mercury monitoring equipment for years, despite such monitoring being a condition of its operating permit.
AEPA defended its handling of the situation, saying proactive communication by the permit holders about the monitoring issues was sufficient.The current operating permit for the facility was issued by AEPA in December 2019. It included deadlines for compliance with specific requirements. Three of these requirements are central to Ecojustice's complaint:Submit a mercury emissions study by Dec. 31, 2022.According to AEPA, a mercury analyzer was installed in 2020.
The following month, AEPA said in a letter that the investigation was complete and no sanctions would be issued. The central reason cited was the "due diligence" of Alberta Infrastructure and its contracted operators, who had "frequent communication with to self-report and discuss continuous monitoring issues."
Fournier noted that, in lieu of continuous monitoring, "a manual stack survey was completed, and the 2022 Environmental Monitoring Annual Report submitted to EPA shows that the incinerator stack emissions were below the approval limits for mercury." The report also notes other instances where the facility failed to meet conditions of its permit, including several days where mercury emissions were above the mandatory limit, and not submitting reports by required deadlines.Veolia referred all questions to Alberta Infrastructure as the owner of the facility.
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