[Parker-L] [PBD 5-06-01] Stop dithering and clean up the Tar Ponds

[Parker Barss Donham]

6 May 2001
Halifax Daily News
Parker Barss Donham


	Arsenic, benzene, chromium, cyanide, lead, polyaromatic hydrocarbons,
selenium, toluene, and zinc.

	Those are some of the toxic chemicals found to exceed safe levels, in
some cases by many multiples, in the soil and groundwater of the
residential neighbourhoods surrounding the Sydney Tar Ponds and the
former Sysco coke ovens. Some are well known carcinogens.

	The belated disclosure of those findings last week, after government
agencies sat on the test results for two months, provoked
environmental activist Elizabeth May to begin a hunger strike on
Parliament Hill. She wants prompt action to move families in the
affected area.

	Who can disagree?  Nova Scotia has the highest rates of cancer in
Canada, and within the province, Cape Breton is a hot spot for lung,
breast and stomach cancer. What responsible politician would want
citizens exposed to such hazards while bureaucrats dither about the
scope of the problem, the magnitude of the risk, the best course for
remediation?

	Yet the scope of the problem, the magnitude of the risk, and best
course for fixing it turn out to be intractable questions,
monumentally difficult to solve.

	May herself once suggested that everyone within a half-mile radius of
the Tar Ponds might have to relocate. Such a decision would displace
about 15,000 people and hundreds of businesses. Deciding the right
course between that extreme and the inaction favoured by complacent
provincial public health officials, and doing so with sufficient
urgency not to expose citizens longer than necessary, is, to
plagiarize Sir Winston, a problem wrapped in a predicament surrounded
by a conundrum.

	In the last 15 years, two idealistic efforts to clean up the mess
have failed miserably.

	In the mid-1980s, Jack Leydon, a provincial environment official,
dreamed up a scheme to excavate the worst of the tar pond sludge and
burn it in an incinerator that would generate enough electricity to
cover most of the cleanup cost. On a tour of the Tar Ponds in 1986,
Leydon, who was nearing retirement, spoke of someday showing his
grandchildren the site he helped clean up.

	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.

	Next, the province proposed to bury the toxic sludge and pave it
over. The plan wasn't that far fetched. The same had officials
approved construction of a shopping centre and a new Sobey's store on
filled-in sections of the Tar Ponds estuary.

	The infuriated reaction of Sydney residents produced the second
idealistic venture, the Joint Action Group, a citizen driven
initiative to examine the problem, sort through the alternatives, and
implement a comprehensive solution.

	In the five years since its establishment, JAG, too, has become a
fiasco. With few exceptions, Sydney's intelligentsia never showed much
interest in the project. Instead, JAG became a battleground for
confrontations between dedicated but organizationally inept
environmental activists -- symbolized by the self-defeatingly volatile
Marcocchio -- and government bureaucrats who grew increasingly
defensive and obdurate.

	Their interminable squabbles rarely focused on substantive cleanup
issues but rather on procedural minutia of JAG's own processes. The
glacially slow progress that resulted proved a happy accident for
senior levels of government. As long as Sydney residents bickered
among themselves about the right course of action, politicians and
bureaucrats didn't have to find the astronomical sums required to fix
the problem.

	If May's protest compels the federal and provincial governments to
stop this dithering, it will have been a blessing.

	She wants affected families moved immediately, and most Nova Scotians
would agree. But which families? What about the shopping centre and
the supermarket? And what are we to say to those who fall just outside
the relocation zone? These are harder questions to answer than May
lets on, but the lack of certainty is no excuse for not getting the
process started.

	There will still remain the question of how to clean up the Tar
Ponds, the former coke oven site, the old Sydney City dump, and any
residential and commercial properties deemed unfit for their current
uses.

	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.

	Do all this, and do it now. There is no excuse for further delay.

	<I> Copyright © 2001 by Parker Barss Donham <parker@donham.org>. All
rights reserved. <N>






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