The long, sad story of one of Canada’s worst acts of environmental vandalism starts in the 1960s, when a paper mill in Dryden started dumping mercury into the waters upstream of Grassy Narrows. Mercury accumulates in animal tissues and concentrates as you move up the food chain, so poisoning the water had the effect of poisoning the fish that Indigenous people relied on to feed themselves. By 1970, governments had to close the local fishery, and the Dryden mill was ordered to halt any further mercury dumping.

But while the acute pollution stopped, the Dryden mill remains in existence today, and policymakers continue to protect it — in part because it’s a key local employer in an area of the province where there are few alternatives for economic development. In 1985, the Ontario government indemnified the mill’s owners for environmental damage they caused and assumed the responsibility for paying compensation to people sickened by mercury; the indemnity has been so broad and all-encompassing that it has survived numerous corporate changes in ownership, as well as a court challenge by Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment.

While the mill stopped adding new mercury to the waters of northern Ontario decades ago, it may not have stopped causing harm, if recent science is correct. Brian Branfireun, a Canada Research Chair in Environment and Sustainability and a professor at Western University, released a report this week (commissioned by Grassy Narrows First Nation) arguing that continuing releases of sulphates and organic matter from the mill are stimulating the release of methylmercury in the Wabigoon River.

Naturally occurring bacteria in the river convert inorganic mercury (that is, the kind dumped in the river) into more dangerous methylmercury. The process isn’t novel or unique to the Wabigoon; Branfireun says, however, that sulphates and organic matter produced by the mill and released into the water are stimulating the growth of these bacteria, which are in turn generating a much higher level of mercury in the water than would be present without that pollution.

The good news, such as it is: based on what we know about other rivers, Branfireun says that if sulphate and organic matter pollution from the mill were to stop, mercury levels should start to fall within years — not the decades it will likely take to more comprehensively remediate the river sediments.

The bad news is that nothing in the history of this story suggests that Ontario is willing to do anything that might put the jobs of the Dryden mill at risk. Mills have been idled all over the north, including this winter in Espanola. But it’s one thing when the impersonal forces of global markets lead to layoffs — it’s something very different when the government is seen to be responsible for shuttering a major employer.

Of course, that just leaves every other part of this story that the government is unequivocally responsible for. It was an Ontario government that allowed the pollution of the river in the first place and an Ontario government that indemnified the mill in the name of keeping it and its jobs in northern Ontario. The “success” of that policy arguably makes the government responsible for the ongoing harms created by the mill’s operation. That means, in turn, that all of us in Ontario have an interest in what happens there, no matter how distant we are from Dryden.

I won’t pretend to be an instant expert in forestry or paper products. I don’t know that there’s an obviously correct answer to this problem. Maybe the mill could be upgraded to eliminate the sulphate and organic-matter effluents, or maybe that’s beyond current technology. I tend to believe that, in 2024, there’s a lot that’s possible if you write a big enough cheque.

And make no mistake, the people of Ontario will almost certainly be the ones writing a cheque here — either to fix this problem or, later on, to compensate the people hurt by it.