Hamilton neighbourhood covered after plant malfunction sends 'beans raining down'
CBC
Adrienne Van Halem woke up one recent morning to find it had rained soybeans overnight.
The 35-year-old left her home on Burlington Street East in Hamilton on Dec. 29 to walk her dog and found something off-white sprinkled over cars, houses, porches — everything in her North End neighbourhood.
It wasn't snowfall or the salt that Van Halem mistook it for at first. It was bean husks.
"It struck me as unusual, of course," she said with a laugh. "It's just gross and messy and surprising to have beans raining down."
Van Halem shared the odd occurrence on the website Reddit, asking whether there was anyone she should contact.
"My whole block is covered in the soybean skins," she wrote, sharing a picture of the top of a car dotted with shells.
The homeowner also called nearby Bunge, a U.S.-based food company that operates an oilseed processing plant in Hamilton, to ask if it had any explanation for what happened.
She said she received a voicemail confirming the facility was involved, and the next day a letter arrived acknowledging what happened, along with a gift card for a car wash.
Sometime overnight between Dec. 28 and 29, pieces of soybeans were "discharged inadvertently," Bunge spokesperson Deb Seidel wrote in an email to CBC News, calling it a rare occurrence.
"While the hulls discharge posed no health or safety risk to either neighbours or employees, we understand that the residue was an annoyance for our neighbours," she said.
Seidel confirmed that gift certificates were handed out to those who were affected and said the company contacted Ontario's Ministry of the Environment and is "working on identifying and implementing corrective action from the incident."
The ministry confirmed in an email to CBC News that it followed up with Bunge and determined that the spray of shells that landed on the area was the result of a plugged dust collector caused by excess moisture in the process.
"The facility was unaware until the City of Hamilton relayed a public complaint," the email read.
That statement left Lynda Lukasik shocked.
P.E.I.'s Public Schools Branch is looking for 50 substitute bus drivers, and it'll be recruiting at three job fairs on Saturday, June 8. The job fairs are located at the Atlantic Superstore in Montague, Royalty Crossing in Charlottetown, and the bus parking lot of Three Oaks Senior High in Summerside. All three run from 9 a.m. until noon. Dave Gillis, the director of transportation and risk management for the Public Schools Branch, said the number of substitute drivers they're hiring isn't unusual. "We are always looking for more. Our drivers tend to have an older demographic," he said.