JAG demise not a million too soon
Costly process has exaggerated tar ponds problem,
and drawn government into unneccessary spending.
Letter to editor from Bruce MacDonald (Op-Ed.)
Cape Breton Post
Saturday, Sept. 27, 2003
Hip hip hooray!
The ineffective and unnecessary
Joint Action group as
we've known it, is gone. It's
about seven years and $60 million
too late but it is encouraging
to know that there are some
federal, provincial and municipal
politicians and departmental
officials who have enough
common sense and backbone to
terminate this questionable,
some say ridiculous, organization.
Along with the unfactual
and at times greatly exaggerated
local media stories, JAG has
given this area a totally undeserved
bad reputation for toxic
pollution. There seemed to be a
limitless supply of dollars
available to this useless project
when health care operations
were crying for money for
worthwhile facilities and treat-
ment.
Why the expensive procedure to
deal with Domtar
tank's residue tar? Why special
treatment of water in the tank,
possibly the same type of water
that runs off tar-covered parking
lots after rain storms? Isn't
this tar-type material similar to
what is used to pave our
streets? Why ship it away to be
burned in the first place?
It seems mostly everything
in the tar ponds process has
had to be conducted in the most
consultant-fee-attractive way
because that is the way the
process has been designed.
How did the, tar ponds cleanup
become the Muggah Creek
watershed project? Had it to do
with generating more studies
and consultalit fees? You
thought so-called cleanup was
about pollution, didn't you. No,
no!
It's always seemed to be
about how can we be about to
do something, and how can we
commission another study or
engineering plan, While continuing
not to complete anything because
that might kill the golden goose.
Perhaps proportionately more profit has
been made from the little Sydney
tar ponds than from the
Athabasca tar sands in the West.
Probably the ultimate in
unnecessary JAG expense is
the recent blueberry study.
While the steel plant and coke
ovens were operating, and for
many years before and since,
people picked and ate blueberries
from Blueberry Hill at
Whitney Pier with no apparent
health problem. Enter JAG: a
full-scale investigation of this
non-issue is commissioned,
complete with analyses by
experts and government agencies,
all with a price tag.
Since no harm was ever
experienced by the hundreds
or thousands who ate the
berries over the years, this was
another expensive consulting
exercise to prove there was nothing
detrimental, which all those
who ate blueberries over
the years knew in the first place.
Has anyone counted the
JAG studies establishing that
there was no harm from the tar
ponds or coke ovens, when
there was no harm indicated in
the first place? Millions of dollars
have been paid to consultants
to prove no problem exists.
Why was encapsulation perfectly
all right for the old city
dump (with its great variety of
polluted contents, many
unknown) while encapsulation
isn't OK for the tar ponds
where the contents are documented
and are no threat to anyone?
We have yet to have any documentation
of any detrimental
effect on the health of anyone
as a result of exposure to the
steel company, the tar ponds or
the coke ovens.
So $65 million after this
ridiculous exercise began, the
area is no better off, nor does
the end seem to be in sight.
After all the supposed expert
advice costing millions, the
future course seems to have
been chosen by the majority of
fewer than 2,000 untrained people,
some 10 per cent of Sydney's
population, who did
workbook questionnaires. How
bizarre can you get? And how
irresponsible can you be with
scarce taxpayers' money?
In l999, I wrote an article in
which I hoped "some politician,
federal, provincial or
municipal, will have guts
enough to stop this JAG farce
and its hemorrhage of money "
Thank the Lord, JAG has been
buried.
Some people believe JAG,
the environmentalists and our
local media have blackened the
name of this community
throughout North America
and beyond, totally without justification
in the form of proven
detrimental effects on people
from so-called toxic wastes. We
should be glad to see the end of
JAG.
On CBC Sunday Morning, a
Halifax correspondent called
Sydney, with its tar ponds,
Canada's ugliest city. All the
unfounded publicity has now
surfaced in the Ontario election,
giving us national notoriety.
Parker Donham,
spokesman for Sydney Tar
Ponds Agency, who as a journalist
probably helped spread
the toxic waste stories, now
complains that outside the
province it's as if the material
in Sydney has some magical,
malevolent property that
makes it worse than any other
contaminated waste. But Nova
Scotians should get used to it,
he adds, because there is 1.1
million tonnes of contaminated
material to go.
A delegate to the recent
Kiwanis International convention,
a person knowledgeable
in environmental matters who
worked on such projects as
Love Canal, couldn't believe
his eyes when he saw the Sydney
tar ponds. What we have
here is not a major pollution
problem but a "small puddle,"
he said. After all the publicity,
he was amazed.
With JAG dead, perhaps
some logic, common sense and
definite action will result, and
not with millions in costs. With
a few bulldozers, loaders and
trucks, and the slag pile, the tar
ponds can be filled and covered
and become a valuable piece of
parkland or industrial real
estate. It's possible that conveyor
belts from some of the
closed mines could speed up
the process.
Filling was the plan before
JAG and the consultants got
control. Let's get back to that
plan, and the sooner the better.
Bruce MacDonald is a retired Sydney
businessman
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