New Brunswick revokes licence for AIM's Saint John scrapyard after fire
Decision follows damning report into Sept. 14 fire that sent toxic cloud of smoke over city
The New Brunswick government has revoked American Iron and Metal's licence for its Saint John port scrapyard.
The decision came almost a month after a damning task force report examining a massive fire in September at the company's waterfront location on the west side of the city.
"I have been weighing this matter with care by thoroughly reviewing the task force report, as well as AIM's response from the past week," Public Safety Minister Kris Austin said in a news release Friday.
"As minister responsible, I am not convinced that AIM has adequately addressed these serious concerns. As such, it is clear to me that it is in the public interest to revoke their licence."
The decision affects its approval under the province's Salvage Dealers Licensing Act. The company also has a separate approval from the provincial Environment Department, which was suspended after the fire.
It wasn't clear Friday if that approval would also be revoked.
The Environment Department said it would not comment on AIM's port location.
The release says the decision cannot be appealed but can be subject to judicial review. The company has 90 days to ask a judge to review the decision.
The move came as a relief for Saint John Mayor Donna Reardon. After the fire, Saint John council had called for AIM to be shut down and relocated.
While noting the company still has 90 days to potentially challenge the move in court, Reardon believes the province has sought to deal with it as quickly as possible.
"I'm really pleased that how swiftly it's come along that we have this decision," the mayor said Friday.
Saint John resident Bryan Wilson, who lives about 800 metres from AIM's site, was excited by the news, given how the operation had impacted residents living nearby over the years.
"Who wants to live next to a place that's exploding?" Wilson said.
"Who wants to live next to a place that's on fire? That doesn't even start to talk about the noise from the material being shredded, the noise from the material being moved and loaded, and the dust that comes from the facility? It has a terrible impact on the community around it and how how people perceive it."
Wilson, though, remains cautiously optimistic, wondering about the details of what comes next.
"But for now I'm just going to rejoice," Wilson said.
The site is on land leased to the company by Port Saint John.
A spokesperson for the port issued a statement Friday saying it is aware of the minister's decision but because there is a 90-day period where it could be challenged, it has no other comment.
The Sept. 14 fire burned in a pile of scrap metal for 40 hours, sending a toxic cloud of smoke over the city and prompting a shelter-in-place order.
In the aftermath, the province suspended AIM's approval to operate pending an investigation. A task force of provincial and port officials was launched, which issued its findings in a Dec. 5 report.
While the exact cause of the fire wasn't determined, the task force report says it was likely a rechargeable battery. Rechargeable lithium ion batteries were found at the site.
The report found the city's fire department wasn't sufficiently equipped to fight the fire, AIM didn't have a proper emergency plan, the scrap piles were more than the six metres prescribed by the National Fire Code of Canada, the operation carried a "significant risk of explosion and fire," and there was a high likelihood of another fire in the future.
"The location of the AIM operation, in the middle of the Saint John community, adjacent to the harbour and a residential neighbourhood, is entirely inappropriate given its now known hazards and risks," the report says.
The fire also left the site contaminated.
"The health and safety of our community and port users remains our top priority and we are working to ensure the full remediation of the AIM site is undertaken by the lessee," port CEO Craig Estabrooks said in a statement.
Austin had given the company until midnight on Dec. 22 to respond to the task force's 12 findings.
In a letter Austin sent to AIM on Friday about the licence decision, the minister wrote that the company's response "does not substantively address the numerous community health, safety and environmental risks and impacts arising from AIM's operations at this location."
Austin said the company's response to the task force report proposed developing a plan to comply with the fire code, something the minister wrote "should have always occurred."
The task force found the piles at the site were two to 2½ times what the code prescribes.
"The AIM Response attempts to minimize future risks and hazards, contests the findings of the Task Force and Investigation Reports, and asserts that AIM's operations at this site are no worse than other industrial operations elsewhere," Austin wrote in the letter to the company.
The minister says the company's response largely addresses its commercial interests and makes assertions of future intentions.
Austin also referred a history of problems highlighted in the task force report at the site at 1 Protection St.
The task force's report says "many alarm bells rang in the lead up to the fire," including 181 explosions and 22 fires since 2011.
It said WorkSafeNB had investigated 21 incidents, including two deaths.
The province has not released the company's response to the task force findings.
CBC has requested comment from the company.
It's unclear how many employees worked at the site.
Other sites inspected
AIM operates multiple other locations around New Brunswick, including another in Saint John at 65 Recycling St.
Earlier this month the province inspected 87 scrap facilities around the province, saying it found 10 were not in compliance in various ways.
The province hasn't disclosed what specific issues were found at each of the 10 sites. They were initially given until Dec. 21 to fix them, but now that that deadline has passed the province has said the sites are getting extensions.
Among the 10 sites are AIM's second Saint John location, as well as its locations in Moncton and Fredericton.
A spokesperson for the province said last week that the 10 sites would be "remediated in the coming weeks," but didn't say what the consequences would be if a site didn't comply.
Residents near the Moncton location have raised concerns about the site in recent months, saying it has become busier since the fire in Saint John.
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With files from Mariam Mesbah