Terminal saga

County considers its options now that Picton Terminals has backed away from rezoning process

Tension continues to build between Picton Terminals (PT) and the port’s neighbours. The company, situated on Picton Bay below White Chapel Road east of Picton, has been slowly working toward expanding the port’s operation from a small port shipping road salt to the County to a fully-functioning port shipping and receiving millions of tonnes of product every year.

Part of that work has been to manage their environmental footprint. This summer, petroleum coke, a fine, black powder used in making cement, was left uncovered in high winds, leaving a neighbouring property contaminated. And for the past year, PT has been working with the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Changer (MOECC) to create a stormwater pond to catch salt runoff before it leaves the property.

The ministry’s involvement was prompted, among other things, by complaints that the salt had contaminated a neighbouring pond. Ministry testing also showed that the bay itself had been contaminated, endangering wildlife.

In November, the MOECC issued PT a provincial work order to properly clean up and manage further contamination.

“We issued the initial order to the owner on November 1 because the company was operating its stormwater management system without the required industrial sewage approval,” ministry spokesperson Gary Wheeler said in an email. “There were also noncompliance issues related to the adverse effects of the company’s operations at the site and the owner’s incomplete responses to the ministry’s requests for mitigation plans.”

Wheeler confirms that while PT requested an extension to conduct an impact assessment, the MOECC has received the company’s remediation plan and continues to monitor the situation.

“The ministry will continue to work to ensure that the company addresses ministry concerns and complies with applicable legislation,” says Wheeler. “In the event that the company is found to be noncompliant with any legal requirements, the ministry will take the most appropriate action to ensure compliance is achieved… the company is in compliance with the ministry’s order.”

The other part of PT’s work is to change its zoning. The company also applied for their property, currently zoned as a quarry, to be reclassified as a port. According to the company’s owner, Ben Doornekamp, the zoning was changed arbitrarily when the County was amalgamated into one municipality, and that has never been rectified.

The company had been working with the muncipality to correct the zoning on one part of its property but recently notified Shire Hall of its intent to pull out of the process.

“We have received numerous legal opinions and professional planning opinions and between the current zoning and the pre-2006 zoning, we can operate our business as legal non-conforming forever,” the letter stated. “Our goal is to clean up all the pre Picton Terminals environmental issues with MOE dating back to 1991. We have been working very closely with MOE for the past 2 years and our goal is to solve all the stormwater management issues within the next year.

“Once the stormwater plans are complete, we may consider re-submitting our zoning application in an effort to cleanup the zoning on our property,” said Ben Doornkamp in his letter to Shire Hall.

The MOECC says land zoning has no impact on the company’s compliance, or non-compliance, with the ministry’s orders. “Municipal zoning decisions and environmental monitoring and remediation processes—overseen by the ministry—progress independently,” says Wheeler. “Construction of monitoring wells, establishment of sampling regimens, enactment of best practices for the management of stored materials, and the implementation of work plans for site remediation are not linked to how a property is zoned.”

Mayor Robert Quaiff, who was strongly in favour of PT when it first came forward to council, says the County hasn’t yet decided how it will proceed, now that the zoning application was pulled.

“We did speak with Robert McAuley and James Hepburn this morning,” says Quaiff. “The statement we are issuing at this time to any of the media is that we are aware of the situation and we are evaluating how best to proceed.”

Quaiff says PT does not affect the County’s project to move Picton’s water intake further down the Bay, something opponents of PT have raised concerns about.

“I don’t know if the environmental assessments are completed to date, but all I’ve been told is the impact of the application itself for the water intake has not been raised as an issue to us,” says Quaiff.

Despite all this, Doornekamp says the application was only pulled temporarily—that PT will reapply once the stormwater management system has been completed to the company’s and the ministry’s satisfaction.

In an interview with the County’s community radio station, Prince Edward-Hastings MPP Todd Smith said that while he knows there has been friction, he still supports the idea of a working port in Picton, as he did when PT first asked for provincial support.

“I still believe that there is the potential for this to all work out and ensure that the company is complying with all of the standards required by the various ministries involved here. In principle, it sounds like a great idea. If we can have a port in the Picton area that reduces the cost of transportation for a lot of our local industry, I think it’s a good thing,” says Smith.

However, Doornekamp says the project can go ahead without government funding or support.

“In our business plan, the more kilometres we take off the road, the better it is for us,”  says Doornekamp. “Things are going really well for us, and at this point, the way things are going, we don’t see the need for funding, we can self-fund.”

“Picton Terminals is now considering a stormwater management system that if approved, will not require the land rezoning. Picton Terminals is preparing a revised stormwater management [plan] that will replace the existing application currently on file with the ministry. Until the company submits a new plan, the application review process will remain on hold.

In order to address ministry concerns regarding environmental conditions at the site, we issued a Provincial Officer’s Order to Picton Terminals requiring the company to undertake certain activities at the site and to submit work plans to address issues raised in the order.”