By Tera Camus / Cape Breton Bureau

Sydney - Residents will be in harm's way if they pick any of the 10 proposed options for tackling Sydney's toxic waste, says the Sierra Club of Canada.

Group spokesman Bruno Marcocchio said Wednesday burying or burning cancer-causing chemicals, including airborne volatile compounds like PCBs, would expose hundreds of people to more danger for many more years.

The options presented by government-hired consultants last week mostly involve a combination of incineration and burial techniques that could take up to 11 years and $450 million.

Instead, the Sierra Club wants residents to demand a full review under the federal Environmental Assessment Act, which could delay a cleanup for three more years.

"We have made these tragic and wasteful mistakes in previous failed attempts to clean up the waste," Mr. Marcocchio told a news conference, recalling a community demand in the early 1990s for a full environmental review. But government rejected the idea and then spent 10 years and $55 million on an incinerator that barely worked.

In 1996, the province proposed a burial scheme that Ottawa rejected in favour of creating the Joint Action Group to let the community decide how to deal with the waste.

Mr. Marcocchio also called a 28-page workbook JAG is using to gauge public opinion a "colouring book" and a waste of time. The booklet takes two hours to complete and citizens have two months to get one filled out, JAG says.

Ken Jardine, a Cape Breton County resident who crashed the news conference, said he was sick of Sydney being "studied to death."

"I think most people are saying let's get on with something, at least put it in one pile so it can be dealt with," he said.

The tar ponds are 1,800 metres long and an average 1.5 metres thick. The nearby coke ovens site contains hundreds of hectares of soil contaminated with potentially harmful chemicals like heavy metals, dioxins, volatile airborne compounds, coke and coal tars.

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.

"I want to rely on scientists who know what they're doing," he said. "Do we dig it up and disturb it and live with that process or do we contain it and live with the fact we haven't really eliminated it, and I think people are prepared to face tough questions."

Mr. Marcocchio said the only people looking for money are consultants sitting around the JAG table who've been working seven years to "minimize" the harm in Sydney.