Canada

When members of Asubpeeschoseewagong Anishinabek (Grassy Narrows First Nation) and their supporters arrive at Queen’s Park this week, they’ll be calling for the Dryden pulp and paper mill that’s been poisoning their water with neurotoxins for nearly 60 years to permanently close.

Staff at the upstream Reed paper mill in Dryden, Ontario, about 150 kilometres east of Grassy Narrows, dumped nearly 10 metric tonnes of mercury into the English-Wabigoon River system in the 1960s and early 1970s. Mercury poisoned the plants and fish that the people of Grassy Narrows, and neighbouring Wabaseemoong Independent Nation, were consuming.

A half-century later, medical experts are finding that varying nervous and neurological health effects affect up to 90 per cent of Grassy Narrows residents.

In May, scientific researchers released scientific researchers released (archived link) the revelation that sulphate and organic matter in the effluent that the mill is still releasing into the river is making methylmercury in the river system even worse, as opposed to diminishing over time as they were told.