Dofasco and McAnulty Blvd. Photo by Kaz Novak, The Hamilton Spectator.

North Hamilton residents fed up with pollution, dust, noise and odours are getting some lessons in how to fight city hall.

Their hopes for a better environment, as well as parks, schools and transit are getting a $50,000 financial boost from the Hamilton Community Foundation and expert help from the community activists at Environment Hamilton through a project called Addressing Environmental Injustice.

Bankrolled with a $50,000 grant from the foundation, the activists are giving needed help and skills to neighbourhoods and communities -- mostly north of Cannon Street -- to tackle government, business and institutions in a project labelled Addressing Environmental Injustice.

Environment Hamilton is the group that has been involved in putting a motor launch on harbour waters to monitor spills and pollution. They've kept an eye on industrial smokestacks ....

"Instead of people coming to Environment Hamilton for help, which has happened in the past, now we are seeking them out," said Brenda Johnson, co-ordinator of the project which started a couple of months ago.

She aims to pull neighbourhood groups together for added clout.

Dawn Lescaudron says North End residents find it difficult to get help because of stereotypical attitudes and said Johnson has been really helpful in arranging neighbourhood meetings and getting the attention of politicians.

The grant from the community foundation allowed Environment Hamilton to hire Johnson ... full time for one year.

Don McLean, a director of Environment Hamilton, says it's part of a direction by the group to strengthen neighbourhood associations and communities.

"People in north Hamilton live cheek by jowl with industrial facilities and are not well-served by some of the planning processes and services," he said.

North End residents look north on Sherman towards the bay and see the steel mills on Burlington Street. Photo by Kaz Novak, The Hamilton Spectator.

With lower incomes and struggling with various environmental and health issues, north Hamilton residents find it difficult to muster the political clout to get things done.

And those living in residential enclaves in historic industrial areas -- dating back to when workers walked to the job -- get little sympathy from folks in clean, residential subdivisions.

"People say you knew when you bought the house that you were living in an industrial zone; live with it and eat it," Lescaudron said.

She and her neighbours have been fighting the new Biox biodiesel manufacturing plant on Hamilton Port Authority land near their Wentworth and Oliver Street homes.

Wayne Simpson of Oliver Street sits on his porch and looks onto the construction of the controversial Biox biodiesel manufacturing plan on Hamilton Port Authority land. Photo by Kaz Novak, The Hamilton Spectator.

Residents may have known what they were buying into, but that doesn't mean they have to put up with new and potentially polluting plants, she said.

"We are hard-working people and not second class," said Lescaudron. "We finally have something going on, but I don't know if it is really going to help as far as Biox is concerned."

Ward 3 Councillor Bernie Morelli is excited by it.

North Hamiltonians endure "not only environmental injustice, but sociological injustice," he says.

Morelli said other parts of the city tend to snicker rather than rally to help.

"It's an ongoing battle to maintain a semblance of neighbourhood, even with due respect for the zoning bylaws and industrial zones," he says. "The North End has taken some real hits."

At a time when emerging industrial plants could be consolidated at specific brownfield sites, the new Biox biodiesel plant is being allowed to intrude on the residential enclave at Oliver and Wentworth streets, he says.

Morelli and Ward 4 Councillor Sam Merulla says citizens in more politically sophisticated neighbourhoods will turn out by the hundreds upon news of airport development zoning and complain when there is just the whiff of a new meat-packing plant on the Mountain.

Merulla says Ward 4's low-income residents have been unable to derail what's called a new gasification plant on Strathearne Avenue that he regards as an incinerator to burn sewage sludge for energy.

"Ward 4 brings more revenue per capita to the table -- $80 million --and the rest of the city benefits but doesn't have to live with the aftermath," Merulla says.

Hamilton East MPP Andrea Horwath says north Hamilton residents are kept busy just making ends meet, but they are becoming increasingly frustrated and want the information and tools to take on the issues that affect their quality of life.

"The issues are not only what they are living next to, but what might be coming into the neighbourhood," she says.

Burke Austin of Community Action for Parkdale East says efforts to bring the various neighbourhood groups together are needed.

"There are so many issues and there is strength in numbers," she says. "It's frustrating to fight big business."

A garbage composting facility for Hamilton is a good thing. But she said the city wasn't kidding anyone when it conducted a search process for the best site. People knew the Burlington Street site would be picked because the city already owned the former Firestone Tire plant property, Austin says.

Betty Muggah, Hamilton Community Foundation vice-president responsible for grants and community initiatives, says Environment Hamilton's project dovetails with the foundation's aims to support neighbourhoods looking to resolve environmental issues and fight poverty.

"This particular project that Environment Hamilton has identified really builds on substantial research by health researchers at McMaster University and elsewhere," she says.

You only have to consider the limited green space in north Hamilton to realize the environmental problems and health issues faced by some of the area's more-challenged neighbourhoods, she says.

Lloyd Street homeowners look out to find industrial neighbours shadowing their back yards. Photo by Kaz Novak, The Hamilton Spectator.

McMaster University professor Brian McCarry, who is nationally acclaimed for his research on air quality, says health studies have detailed the burden of particulate matter in the air that north Hamilton residents live with.

"There's no question the closer you are to the industry, the more impact you get," he said.

And then there is the exhaust and emissions from vehicles on heavily travelled Burlington Street , he says.

McCarry has been called upon to assist neighbourhood groups. But he says they too often spring up around a particular issue and then disappear without ever interacting with each other.

McLean of Environment Hamilton says the project will help make groups aware of the rules, regulations and processes and how to use them.

"Then they can make sure they are protected to the extent the law requires them to be protected," says McLean .

The issues that end up being addressed will be decided by the groups involved and not Environment Hamilton, he says.

And Johnson says although the project is tackling environmental injustice, it shouldn't be viewed as an adversarial process.

"Sometimes a simple phone call gets things done," she says.

'We've become a dumping ground'
By Rob Faulkner
The Hamilton Spectator
Oct 21, 2005

The North End is solidly part of the lower city. Fitting, because when it comes to the environment it often faces an uphill battle.

The area has more than its share of factories, low-income areas, truck traffic, air pollution, among other challenges. The Addressing Environmental Injustice project wants to ensure it doesn't become a dumping ground.

Co-ordinator Brenda Johnson says priorities will be set by residents, but areas of concern include undesirable plants to create biodiesel fuel, or create energy from sewage sludge.

"The general theme I'm hearing from councillors and residents is that we've become a dumping ground because no other community will have them," Johnson said.

"That's not fair to residents."

Michael Jerrett, a McMaster medical geographer now at the University of Southern California, co-authored a 2003 peer-reviewed paper on the local ties between higher air pollution and lower property values.

"It's an unavoidable consequence of the market where people can't buy their way out of polluted neighbourhoods," said Jerrett, who still works with Mac colleagues on local research.

"This is a pattern that's been put in place over a very long historical period."

Jerrett said neurotoxins such as manganese are in the highest concentration in Canada around Hamilton steel mills and have been linked to brain disorders.

Poor people in poor neighbourhoods suffer most from dirty air, his work has found, because they tend to be poorly housed, poorly fed, less educated and less likely to get good medical care.

But a shift is happening, he said, which is spreading air pollution more equally across the city, as plants downsize and truck traffic increases in popularity, and use routes outside the core.

East End Councillor Sam Merulla opposes a sewage-sludge-fuelled energy plant on Strathearne Avenue as a potential SWARU, a reference to the polluting city-owned incinerator shut down two years ago.

"We have to look forward, and this (plant) is what the city was 50 years ago. It doesn't do much for the image issue," he said.

Critics worry about trucking sludge through city neighbourhoods.

In Ward 4 north-south truck traffic is "phenomenal" and veers past elementary schools, Merulla said. It's unsafe, it damages roads and the idling trucks pollute the air, he said.

Odour is another common complaint due to the Woodward Avenue sewage treatment plant, he said, to the point where he set up an "odour hotline" to track the smell. He said it led to an $18-million upgrade.

Johnson said Environment Hamilton has written the provincial Environment Minister Laurel Broten to insist the Liberty Energy sludge plant undergo an environmental assessment.

In addition to the Biox and Liberty Energy plants, she said the new North End group may also help Beach Boulevard residents push for the clean up of waterfront sites.

Jim Howlett, president of the Hamilton Beach Preservation Committee, plans to sue the Hamilton Port Authority if it doesn't clean up what he calls the toxic mess dredged from the bottom of the harbour that is being dumped in waterborne containment cells.

"I guess you could say we aren't typical. We're not the kind of people whose protest is to sit down and watch TV and complain about things," he said.