1999, Sunday, May 16 Read Full Article Halifax Daily News Parker Barss Donham Finally, compassion Regardless of the actual danger, Frederick Street residents deserve the province's help ... Track the plume Given its own checkered track record on protecting Sydney's environment, the province is right to treat the Frederick Street residents compassionately. It should also design and implement a continuing program to monitor contaminants along the coke-ovens periphery to track the migration of the toxic plume. And make the results public promptly.

1999, Sun 30 May Read Full Article The Daily News (Halifax) Parker Barss Donham Ooze control: Government finally trying to do the right thing The Provincial government has finally done the right thing by residents of Sydney's Frederick Street and Curry's Lane in offering to buy all homes located on the two streets adjacent to the Sysco coke-ovens site. It's about time. Since 10 families were moved out of the neighbourhood two weeks ago, after material seeping into basements was found to contain arsenic, anyone with eyes could see that neighbours of the government's toxic-waste site had been subjected to more than enough hardship.

2001, May 6 Read Full Article Halifax Daily News Parker Barss Donham Stop dithering and clean up the Tar Ponds Alas, federal and provincial environment officials ignored warnings from environmental gadfly Bruno Marcocchio, and unwisely exempted the project from normal environmental assessment protocols. As a result, they failed to detect pockets of deadly PCBs that could not be safely burned at the incinerator's operating temperature. It didn't much matter. Whether through technical incompetence or corrupt contractors, neither the dredge intended to gather the sludge nor the incinerator intended to burn it ever worked properly. After nearly a decade and more than $60 million, the fiasco was abandoned. Ottawa and Halifax should take up the challenge issued by Sydney Mayor John Morgan and dissolve JAG. Hire a competent management team with experience in environmental remediation. Hand pick a corps of scientific advisors and a small group of community consultants carefully chosen to avoid the personality clashes that rendered JAG ineffectual.

2001, 15 May Read Full Article Halifax Daily News Parker Barss Donham How to end May's hunger strike Ottawa and the province say they are waiting for a Florida scientist's opinion of the acute risk from momentary exposure to the area. Residents can be forgiven for thinking this a red herring. No one expects your hand to fall off if you dip it in the tar ponds. Chronic risk is the issue, and there is every reason to fear the chemical soup is taking a toll. Here's a suggestion: Don't just ask politicians how they'd like living with such a problem. Fill 350 Mason jars with tar pond sludge and courier one to every member of Parliament and the Nova Scotia Legislature. See how they react to a quart of the stuff, then ask what they'll do for people living with 700,000 tonnes of it.

2001, May 15 The statement below was made by Parker Donham to local artist Gayle Bird regarding her Tar Ponds Web site. Audra Williams tipped me off to your Tar Ponds tourism site. It's brilliant. A wonderful idea, beautifully executed. Satire can be a devastating political tool, and no project was ever more ripe for ridicule than this one.

2001, May 30 Read Full Article Halifax Daily News Parker Barss Donham Moving the toxic goal posts Given Sydney residents' decades of exposure to toxins, shouldn't guidelines for their further exposure be tighter, rather than looser?

2001, July 15 Read Full Article Halifax Daily News Parker Donham parker-l@mix.twistedpair.ca Maybe seals caused the arsenic Just because the Sydney Steel coke ovens dumped more than 700,000 tonnes of arsenic-laden sludge into Sydney Harbour over the last 100 years, there's no scientific proof this played any part in the unsafe levels of arsenic showing up in area children. Just because the steel plant and the coke ovens showered adjacent neighbourhoods with additional thousands of tonnes of cancer-causing chemicals every year for a century is no reason to think this has anything whatever to do with Sydney residents having the highest cancer rates in Canada.

2001, July 22 Read Full Article Article: Halifax Daily News Parker Donham parker-l@mix.twistedpair.ca Toxic Confusion: the feds might be right Health Canada revealed Wednesday that only five of the first 640 soil samples tested in the neighbourhood north of the Sydney Steel Coke Ovens exceeded acceptable short-term exposure levels. Provincial Health Minister Jamie Muir, who never saw a health hazard he didn't think Sydney residents could live with, was quick to declare that the hot spots had nothing to do with pollution from Sysco. As you might have guessed, they were the victims' fault: arsenic found where a family had dumped ashes from its coal stove; lead left behind after careless removal of an old pipe. Then came Friday's Chronicle-Herald, and a page-one story that left even the most jaded Tar Ponds watchers sick with rage. The "short term exposure levels" against which samples had been checked were not the same guidelines the rest of Canada is expected to live with. The Sydney samples had been judged by much more relaxed standards drawn up specifically for this project.

2001, December 2 Read Full Article Parker's Last Column Halifax Daily News Parker Donham I've written about the coke ovens and the tar ponds since the early eighties. I passionately want them cleaned up. Cape Breton has no more urgent or important task. The tar ponds are a 700,000-tonne anchor, dragging the island down.

Donham Crosses Over To The Dark Side 2001, December In December Parker Barss Donham, a freelance journalist who was a member of CBC's First Edition's Political Panel for years, was hired as Communications Advisor with the Sydney Tar Ponds Agency. In his last column for the Daily News he writes: "Suddenly I find myself a ‘former’ journalist, having, as CBC's Canada Now put it, ‘retired’ from journalism to take a government P.R. job. This is known in the trade as ‘crossing over to the dark side’, or more bluntly, selling out." Donham apparently had little choice in the matter as one U. of King's Journalism article illustrates. His Journalism jobs had all but dried up. As one can see in the articles that follow, Parker has made a complete about face. Where once he fought for environmental issues, he now discredits virtuality all concerns brought forward by the Sierra Club and other environmental watch dogs. He's become a government hired gun, the STPA's spin doctor. Give it up Parker. Hang up your gun and walk toward the light; the GREEN light!

2002, Monday, Jan. 14 Read Full Article The Toronto Star Tar ponds rep charges $7,000 a month Taxpayers pick up the tab for Nova Scotia spokesman The contract also forbids Donham, who has been critical of the tar ponds cleanup in the past, from commenting on "policy issues even tangentially related to the work of the Sydney Tar Ponds Agency." Donham, who last May urged readers of an online column to protest government inaction by mailing Mason jars filled with tar ponds sludge to members of federal and provincial legislatures, says things have changed. "I'm coming along at a time when a corner has been turned on this project," said Donham, who lives in rural Cape Breton. "Work is well underway on it and new milestones are going to start coming fast and furious."

2002, Thursday, February 28 Read Full Article The Halifax Herald Limited Sydney coke ovens 'hellish' on health But, he said, scientific research over the last year has shown no significant risk threatens residents from the residue of a century of steel and coke manufacturing. "I just don't think that there's much question left that proximity to the coke ovens and the tar ponds is a non-starter when it comes to the current health levels of people in this city," Mr. Donham said.

2002, OCT 18TH Read Full Article By Jodi Magliaro The Brunswickan Living with toxic waste in your backyard On May 18, 2001, Health Minister Allan Rock announced that he would fund a relocation of the residents located on Frederick St. if tests proved that there was a health risk in the area. On December 4, a federal and provincial report concluded that the Sydney tar ponds were safe! Parker Donham, spokesperson for the Sydney tar ponds agency, said that there is no reason to relocate residents. "What we've said throughout is that we're going to act on the basis of science. There is to this point no scientific basis for relocating any body. We're not going to relocate."

2002, Monday, December 23 Read Full Article Halifax Herald Sludge shipment to Ontario a sure thing "We have an agreement in place to remove the contents of the Domtar tank that meets all provincial and federal regulations," Parker Donham said Sunday. "Obviously some residents up there are protesting but we don't have an inclination to get involved."

2003, Thursday, March 6 Read Full Article The Halifax Herald Cleanup options hazardous, greens say Parker Donham, spokesman for the provincial Sydney Tar Ponds Agency leading the cleanup effort, said Mr. Marcocchio "wouldn't know how to clean a tub" let alone a toxic waste site and no cleanup would ever satisfy the Sierra Club. He said the group is only out for money as an intervener if Ottawa ever approved an environmental panel review.

Apr. 7, 2003 Read Full Article Canadian Press Written by: DENNIS BUECKERT Donham said the Nova Scotia government carried out extensive blood and urine testing of pregnant women and children in the affected neighbourhoods in 2001 and found no problems. "Not a single one had elevated levels of lead," said Donham. "What he (Lambert) is saying is, 'it might rain yesterday,' when you already know that it didn't."