Contract Awarded To Demolish BuildingsBy Wes Stewart SYDNEY - Murray Demolition will demolish three structures that are part of the failed tar ponds incinerator project. The Ontario company was first hired two years ago to demolish structures at Sydney Steel. The three buildings are located at the north end of the plant property but were not part of the original demolition contract. Sysco spokesman Alf MacLeod confirmed Thursday that Murray Demolition submitted the low bid of about $1 million. There were two other bidders, a New Glasgow company whose bid package was incomplete and a local company, which came in "quite a bit higher," he added. Work on the demolition won’t start for a few weeks while the demolition company completes its engineering work and checks the buildings for any environmental contaminants that would have to be removed, MacLeod said. "The (demolition) work has to be engineered; Murray Demolition has been working on demolishing structures and they are already familiar with the site." He noted the company uses local operators to run the machines used in the demolition work. Equipment also will have to be removed from the buildings. Receivers Ernst & Young, the management company hired by the province to sell off salvageable pieces of the steel plant and demolish structures on the site, is now handling the incinerator property, managed until February by Crown-owned Sydney Environmental Resources Ltd. The receivers tendered the harbour pumps building, boiler house and the No. 3 power house. The province is also shopping the $55-million fluidized bed combustion incinerator, originally built in 1994 to burn 700,000 tons of sludge that has settled in the Sydney tar ponds from years of steel and coke making. It is recognized as one of the most toxic waste sites in the country. wstewart@cbpost.com |