Between August 13, 2018 and Feb.1, 2021 I made TWENTY EIGHT reports to the Ministry of the Environment’s Pollution Spill Hotline – 1-866-663-8477 – about gas vapours entering my property during a tanker fill at the gas station right next door.
Those were just the gas infiltrations I knew about. Who knows what happened during the fills when I wasn’t home ?
I have been in the garden, planting or tending when I suddenly had a horrific amount of gas vapour in my face as I bent down (gas molecules are heavier than air and sink).
I have been laying in bed reading a book when the stench of gasoline suddenly assaults my nostrils, during the winter, with all my doors and windows closed.
I have been outside with my compromised pal Rumpy, enjoying the fall weather, when a wave of gas vapours were blown over us. It was the fall and he was having a nice day, and I knew his days were numbered. All I could think to do was to pick him up and carry him to the factory’s fence, as I held him with my back turned to the direction of the vapours.
I have been doing ordinary things inside the house, when I heard the hiss of the tanker’s brakes. Within 10 minutes the house began to stink of gasoline vapour. I gathered up the cats and put them in the bedroom and shut the door, with a thick towel rolled up under the gap at the bottom.
There was no scenario where a gasoline vapour infiltration was a neutral incident.
On Feb. 1, 2021, when I called the Pollution Spill Hotline to report another gas vapour infiltration, they refused to take my report ! I was informed that the hotline was now ONLY for afterhours reporting, and I was to call the local London Ministry of the Environment office to report this.
It was a little after 4:00 p.m. on a weekday.
I called and there was NO ANSWER.
I left a voice message. No one called me the next day or after that with a report number. A few days later I was emailed an ID # for the incident.
Since then, I have reported four more gas vapour infiltrations to the London office.
Meanwhile, on March 9, 2021, there was a brief news story on CBC about a 12 SECOND visible emission from a factory in Hamilton:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/dofasco-emission-1.5942265
This emission included carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen.
Yet uncombusted gasoline vapours are explosive and volatile, and contain known carcinogens like Benzene. The vents next door emit gas vapours for at least 10 MINUTES STRAIGHT during all tanker fills !
Black Picket Fence 