The old North American Plastics building on Baseline Road in Wallaceburg is coming down.
Chatham-Kent issued a demolition permit for the facility, which has been mostly vacant for over 20 years.
Paul Lacina, C-K’s chief building official, said there are some environmental concerns on the site.
“We were contacted by an agent for the owner who is interested in removing the building down to the slab,” Lacina said. “There has been some environmental issues there in the past, so we contacted the MOE (Ministry of Environment) and the MOE and the municipality worked jointly together to abate some of the issues with the PCBs, which are known on site.”
PCBs – or polychlorinated biphenyls – were widely used as dielectric and coolant fluids, for example in transformers, capacitors, and electric motors.
“The agent then contacted an environmental company, who then removed the existing PCBs, which were hidden barrels inside the building<” Lacina said. “They then did a sweep test to make sure there was no PCBs left on the concrete floor because that is still remaining.”
Lacina said once the abatement was complete, a permit was issued for the remainder of the buiklding to be knocked down.
Lacina added the cost is all being incurred by the owner of the building, with no taxpayer dollars being used.
The future of the site is still unclear, however it will all be the responsibility of the property owner moving forward.
“We know there are contaminants,” Lacina said. “The MOE charged the owner with having PCBs on site. The MOE is aware of the property and has been for a number of years. They have worked with the owner to clean up and he has done some cleanup on the property, but the PCBs that are remaining after the demolition are under the ground, where the ones we were dealing with before were above the ground and could be easily removed.”
Lacina said he is hopeful the current baseline Road demolition will not see the same fate at the former W.T. Laing site and Oxford Automotive sites in Wallaceburg.
“Hopefully the demolition agreement is that they take everything away,” he said. “We’ve had issues with W.T. Laing and Oxford Automotive where the contractors has gone in, removed all the steel, made their profit, and left piles of concrete and other debris that is not salvageable. Hopefully that doesn’t happen with this one. We have assurances from the agent that everything will be moved off site and all that will be left is the slab.”
North American Plastics closed in 1994 and the building has remained empty besides, a couple years being used as an indoor motocross facility and a temporary political campaign office.
