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After this month’s fire at a metal recycling plant on Saint John’s waterfront, some area gardeners are wondering whether they can eat the fruits of this year’s labour.
If there’s a danger, people should be explicitly told, said Hazel Alexander, who has a plot at the community garden behind Bayside Middle School, on Bayside Drive in east Saint John near the causeway across Courtenay Bay.
“If it’s toxic, let’s find out what is it and how long is it going to stay in the soil and can we use these gardens next year?”
The fire at AIM’s metal recycling plant on the city’s west side broke out at about 1 a.m. on Sept. 14 and wasn’t extinguished until 8 p.m on Sept. 15. Over nearly 40 hours, Saint John firefighters poured more than two million litres of water on the flames.
Gardeners want more information from the province about the effects of this month’s fire at a metal recycling plant on the produce they’ve been growing.
The smoke was so bad the Department of Health issued a shelter in place warning to residents.
Alexander said she and other gardeners still have so many questions following a message from New Brunswick’s Emergency Measures Organization on Sept. 15. At the end of the shelter-in-place advisory, EMO told people to throw away any above-ground produce from their gardens that may have been exposed.
Alexander said she hasn’t heard anything else from government officials about lingering dangers from the fire.
“We still really don’t know. Do we eat anything? Do we not? Does it all go to waste?” she wondered.
CBC News contacted the province for answers and were told Public Health will respond later on Tuesday.
Alexander said not everyone would have heard the initial advisory from the province on the day after the fire started.
“I was down here on Thursday doing some weeding and picking. I’d even invited a friend over to get some produce and one of the ladies said that she’d seen on a map, the dispersal area of all of this smoke and toxic debris or whatever it is, and that we were right in the middle of it. So she called the Department of Health and they told her not to eat any plants that were growing above ground.”
But Alexander wonders whether underground vegetables are safe.
“We don’t know. Since it rained the day after, it went into the ground level. And they say you can eat the underground plants. But if the rain went through and it went up and the plants were growing on that water, would even the underground plants be toxic?”
Alexander thinks the province should provide more information, particularly since many people grow their own vegetables because they can’t afford to buy from grocery stores. She worries that some may take the risk or think they can just wash off the produce.
She said it’s a big loss for some people — especially after tending the gardens all summer.
AIM’s recycling plant in Saint John, meanwhile, remains under a stop-work order from the province, which has also suspended the company’s approval to operate. Premier Blaine Higgs said the plant won’t resume operations until the province is satisfied the company can do so safely.
A task force was also created last week to examine the fire. The group has already held its first meeting.
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