{"id":41158,"date":"2016-06-22T20:51:46","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T20:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/2-ontario-cabinet-ministers-to-visit-grassy-narrows-first-nation-after-new-mercury-revelations\/"},"modified":"2016-06-22T20:51:46","modified_gmt":"2016-06-22T20:51:46","slug":"2-ontario-cabinet-ministers-to-visit-grassy-narrows-first-nation-after-new-mercury-revelations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/2-ontario-cabinet-ministers-to-visit-grassy-narrows-first-nation-after-new-mercury-revelations\/","title":{"rendered":"2 Ontario cabinet ministers to visit Grassy Narrows First Nation after new mercury revelations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kathleen Wynne is promising to \u201cget to the bottom\u201d of\u00a0allegations there\u2019s a\u00a0hidden pile of mercury barrels poisoning a northern Ontario river, but the chief\u00a0of Grassy Narrows says her efforts don\u2019t go far enough.<\/p>\n<p>The Ontario Premier is dispatching two cabinet ministers and some government scientists\u00a0to the First Nation, north of Kenora, Ont., on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>The promised visit\u00a0comes after\u00a0a former worker at the\u00a0Dryden, Ont., paper mill revealed he was involved with dumping drums of toxic chemicals into a plastic-lined pit upstream of Grassy Narrows, decades ago.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>\u2018Guilt\u2019 drives former Dryden, Ont. mill worker to reveal his part in dumping toxic mercury<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Mercury contamination at Grassy Narrows can be cleaned up, scientists tell government, again<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Ontario government \u2018sympathetic\u2019 to Grassy Narrows mercury concerns<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s engagement right now to try to discern what this alleged source is,\u201d Wynne told reporters on Tuesday. \u201cI don\u2019t\u00a0have all that information. I want to get to the bottom of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.3645548.1466531712!\/fileImage\/httpImage\/image.JPG_gen\/derivatives\/original_620\/grassy-narrows-chief-responds-to-mercury-dump-site.JPG\" alt=\"Grassy Narrows chief responds to mercury dump site\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure-caption\">Grassy Narrows Chief Simon Fobister (left) and Judy Da Silva speak to media Tuesday morning about community healthy concerns. A letter from a former Dryden, Ont., paper mill worker published Monday reveals details of a mercury dump site from the 1970s that Fobister worries is contributing to ongoing mercury poisoning in the area. (Cameron MacIntosh\/CBC)<\/p>\n<p>Reed Paper\u2019s chemical plant in Dryden was a source of mercury contamination in the 1960s and \u201970s. Chemical leaching from the plant has been well documented and continues to cause public and environmental health concerns.<\/p>\n<p>In a report released in May, environmental scientists determined that current mercury levels in the waters around where people in Grassy Narrows catch fish to eat suggest there is an unknown source of mercury contributing to the problem.<\/p>\n<p>Leaders in the First Nation say they are tired of \u201cfancy talk\u201d from government officials and are\u00a0asking instead for access to the mill site in Dryden to investigate the former worker\u2019s claim there is a hidden mercury dump.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t want any\u00a0more visitations, like public visitations, we want action,\u201d said Chief Simon Fobister at a news conference in Winnipeg on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.3647309.1466611194!\/fileImage\/httpImage\/image.jpg_gen\/derivatives\/original_620\/mercury-graphic.jpg\" alt=\"Mercury graphic\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure-caption\">\n<p>The environmental health coordinator at Grassy Narrows said\u00a0time is running out to clean up the mercury that continues to poison people in the community.<\/p>\n<p>Many\u00a0of the fishermen and trappers\u00a0who first demanded a mercury clean up decades ago\u00a0are now dead, Judy DaSilva said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo like for me it\u2019s like there is no more time,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I\u00a0worry that someday I\u2019ll die\u201d before the fight to have the contamination cleaned up is won.<\/p>\n<p>Glen Murray, Ontario\u2019s Minister of Environment and Climate Change and David Zimmer, Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation are expected to travel to Grassy Narrows on Monday.\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kathleen Wynne is promising to \u201cget to the bottom\u201d of\u00a0allegations there\u2019s a\u00a0hidden pile of mercury barrels poisoning a northern Ontario river, but the chief\u00a0of Grassy Narrows says her efforts don\u2019t go far enough. The Ontario Premier is dispatching two cabinet ministers and some government scientists\u00a0to the First Nation, north of Kenora, Ont., on Monday. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}