By Chris Shannon

Sydney - Little fanfare marked a turning point Wednesday in the cleanup of the tar ponds and coke ovens site here.

Reserved applause by members of the Joint Action Group signaled unanimous support for a motion allowing the cleanup options chosen by the community to move to government for approval.

JAG chairman Dan Fraser said it's the beginning of a new phase in the nearly decade-long project to have the toxic soup cleaned up for good.

"A lot of work had gone into getting to where we are this evening," Mr. Fraser said at the meeting.

In a government-funded study released May 6 by JAG, area residents chose to have the 700,000 tonnes of toxic goo dug up and burnt in a coal-generated incinerator at an estimated cost of $330 million.

Each level of government now has to decide through an environmental assessment process whether incineration is the safest route to go.

"There's 18 to 24 months worth of work to look at these options, to see how they will play out, to have them priced, and the level of acceptability. We're still in the early stages of this," Don Ferguson, Health Canada's senior adviser for the cleanup, said Wednesday.

A Nova Scotia Power Corp. power plant in Point Aconi, which is 30 kilometres outside Sydney, is one potential site for burning the sludge.

But residents there have concerns that chemicals burned in their backyard might be harmful.

JAG met with the local community group earlier this week to answer their questions about cleanup options.

If burning the sludge at Point Aconi isn't acceptable, government would have to look elsewhere.

One Sydney resident said these cleanup options shouldn't be headed to government for further analysis at all.

"It promotes trucking hazardous waste on the highways, taking it to another community and it promotes hazardous waste incineration," Marlene Kane said.

However, Mr. Fraser said the sludge being burned would pose no threat to local residents.

He said the sludge isn't contaminated because it is "soil-washed" or cleaned in another way and includes tar, coal and coke byproducts.

It's expected a review by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency will take nearly two years to complete.

Mr. Fraser said government should abide by the cleanup options chosen by the community, or face the consequences.

"I believe if government does not move forward now, turn it into a project, put the funding in place, honour the requests of our community, they indeed will lose a great deal of credibility for what has gone on since 1996."

crshannon@syd.eastlink.ca