What happened ?
In 1970, a ship from the Irving company, a company that distributes oil, sank about a hundred kilometers from the Magdalen Islands. This ship carries fuel oil, a product that can be used for heating. It is a thick, viscous liquid.
In 1995, 25 years later, we learned that this fuel oil was contaminated with PCBs, a very toxic product. Its use is today prohibited in Canada because it is dangerous for the environment and our health.
A shipwreck that is very harmful to the environment
By running aground, the ship contaminated 35 kilometers of beaches in the Magdalen Islands. It is estimated that for 25 years, each year, 29,000 liters of fuel oil leaked into the water.
At the time, we didn’t really know how to get rid of the fuel oil stuck to the sand. The Canadian Coast Guard therefore decided to shovel it into plastic bags… which were then buried in the sand dunes, for which the Magdalen Islands are famous.
Yes, you read correctly: they buried the problem.
And the ghosts in all this?
You may already know: climate change is causing the erosion of these sand dunes. This means that they are getting smaller little by little. So from time to time, bags filled with contaminated fuel resurface. They are the ghosts of the Islands!
The ideal would be to remove all bags to properly dispose of these unwanted substances. But the mayor of Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Antonin Valiquette, described the obstacles to Le Devoir: “Even if we wanted to remove all the bags, it would not be possible. We don’t know where they are, how many there are and what the impacts would be on the dunes.”
To date, we have collected more than 9,000 bags. But that’s only about 5% of the total number: about 200,000.
Small consolation
Fortunately, the ship was taken out of the water in 1996, so it is no longer spilling fuel oil. It was even refurbished in 2001. Since then, it has transported dry materials, such as wood chips and steel tubes.
And you, how do you react when reading this kind of news?
By Lysiane Alexandre, contributor, Les As de l’info, based on an article by Alexandre Shields, Le Devoir
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