Come collect your belongings
When you’ve gone to a beautiful beach, the simple act of taking your garbage back home with you is one of the base rules of being a good citizen. For a corporate citizen, this act should go “in spades”. Think of the term as an analogy, not an absolute. One of Canada’s top corporate citizens doesn’t play by these simple rules. I’ll not name John Q. Citizen, but he owns the majority of one of the Maritime provinces.
Back in the simple ’70s, somebody lost a barge near the Magdalen Islands. The barge was later found, safe and unsound on the ocean floor where things sat, leaking slowly for a quarter of a century. You have to remember that oil is lighter than water, and the barge contained (an estimated) 4200 long tons of Bunker C fuel as well as (an estimated) 6200 litres of “cargo heating fluid”. One can’t be sure, because not everything that floated away was recovered, in polite terms.
Efforts were made, and somebody (either the representatives of John Q. or Her Majesty’s Own) collected some bags of oil-soaked sand. About 250,000 bags, for those who are keeping count. And then, because the fun time at the beach was over, the bags were buried, here and there and everywhere, in the dunes of the Magdalens. God knows the place has dunes!
Nature has a funny habit with sand dunes. Things don’t stay covered forever, and now those bags from a few days at the beach back in the simpler 70’s are popping into view, here and there and everywhere… Need some PCBs for use around the homestead? Didn’t think so. Perhaps the time has come for the good corporate citizen to come and reclaim his beach toys. After all, the oil industry is good at sucking oil out of sand (reference Alberta where needed).
