A Cleanup Begins - but Concerns Remain Over the Massive Straw-Bale Piles at Elie, Manitoba
by Larry Powell - (Please also note comments at bottom.) A resident of Elie, Manitoba, Linda Aquin, says she worries that the massive backlog of straw-bales stored near the town will catch fire, resulting in the release of toxic chemicals. Aquin and her husband operate a bed-&-breakfast in the small town on the Trans Canada Highway, west of Winnipeg. She says Dow Bio Products which owns the now defunct s t rawboard plant, has hired exterminators to control the rodents living in the straw. She believes they used a poison possibly containing arsenic for this purpose. If a fire breaks out, she adds, she doesn't know what could happen. But, it could be like a chemical fire and if the wind is in the wrong direction, results could be serious. She says a fire at the Elie school some time ago produced toxic smoke when some plastic chairs burned. "We couldn't breath and had to get out of there," she remarked. She fears a similar incident, only on a larger scale, c
