JAG blamed for too much and credited with too little
Critics should either help or stand aside
Letter to editor from Francis Sirois
Cape Breton Post
Saturday, Oct. 4, 2003
During the course of the
project to remediate the
Sydney tar ponds and the coke
ovens site, many people have
expressed their gut feelings.
Last Saturday's article by
Bruce McDonald is an example
(JAG Demise Not a Million Too
Soon, Weekend'Feedback).
Mr. McDonald is as uninformed
today as he was in a
1999 article. He refuses to learn
about the realities of the sites
and has had a head-in-the-sand
posture from the outset.
The "Just bury it and forget
about it" idea is exactly what
the people of Sydney objected
to when the last cleanup
attempt ground to a halt and
governments decided they
needed to get the community
on side. The Joint Action
Group was the mechanism created
for community input.
A local gasoline service station
owner has had to shut
down for four months to
replace a leaking storage tank.
The Nova Scotia environment
department found hydrocarbon
content in the soil to be 10
per cent above the remediation
level and cleaning the site will
cost $400,000 in addition to
shutdown costs. This is the regulatory
standard that must be
applied to government sites as
well as to small business, without
fear or favour. The blathering
of the uninformed changes
this reality not one iota.
Here are some highlights
from the latest JAG public
opinion poll, performed in the
spring by a professional polling
organization (results deemed
accurate to within 3.97 points)"
* 87 per cent of residents felt
overall that JAG was effective;
* 88.2 per cent indicated JAG
was representative of the community;
* 83.8 per cent felt comfortable.
accepting recommendations
for the cleanup from JAG;
* 85.9 per cent would prefer to
see JAG continue.
Based on this, the government
decision to terminate
JAG funding fails the test of
common sense. In my opinion,
it was a cowardly retreat.
Mr. McDonald seems
obsessed with the $62 million
"wasted" by JAG. In his view,
the work was manipulated to
provide maximum fees to consultants.
If it were true it
would represent serious corruption.
To make such claims
is irresponsible.
Thanks to JAG, the disposition
of the money is available
for all to see. I encourage anyone
interested to access the
Web site (www.muggah.org) to
see how the $62 million is being
spent (33 per cent remained as
of March 31).
Some 56 per cent of the money
was being spent on construction
and demolition leading to the
big cleanup. Of this,
more than half was of direct
benefit to Cape Breton Regional
Municipality; the sewer collector
was on the back burner
for 20 years until JAG made it
happen.
Another 32 per cent was
spent on studies required to
define and characterize the
site; 4.6 per cent was appropriated
by governments for "oversight";
and four per cent was
spent by JAG for its offices and
secretariat. The JAG secretariat
cost is inflated because a
third of that cost is for in-kind
services such as office space.
The 1,754 people who took
the time to attend the workbook
sessions and to understand
the alternatives represented
a cross-section of key
representatives of up to 96
organizations in this community
- not including other
individuals of varied backgrounds
who participated. The
scope and breadth of feedback
are unprecedented and confirm
community support for
JAG. This also speaks volumes
for the professionalism and
dedication of JAG's secretariat
staff.
Mr. McDonald's comments
about the Domtar tank suggest
it is acceptable to dump contaminated
fluids anywhere. He
didn't volunteer to have the
sludge and solids dumped in
his back yard. There are disposal
regulations, and even
governments have to comply.
His speculation about
Athabasca tar sands is just as
inane and uninformed as the
rest of his article. Expansion
projects and innovations will
double production within a
year. The conglomerate of Suncor
and Syncrude have
improved their operating costs
from $22 a barrel at start-up to
$7 now, with world prices above
$30. These efficiencies were
brought about by hiring consultants
to do studies. I doubt that the
executives at Suncor
and Syncrude consider the
money spent on consultants to
have been wasted.
The $14,000 blueberry study
was a result of concern by
long-time Whitney Pier pickers
of Blueberry Hill, just north of
the coke ovens site, about
whether, over time, their well-
being could be adversely affected.
People already knew the
blueberries were not an instant
poison. Maybe Mr. McDonald,
believes that there is no actual
contamination unless you are
killed outright.
This small project
proved not only that Blueberry
Hill was safe but that other
sources sampled from the
Northside and supermarket
supplies were also safe. It was
a small price to pay to address
some of the fears about the site
and its history.
Mr. McDonald seems to
think the site is harmless. The
south arm of Sydney Harbour
was closed to fishing in 1982 not
because of a whim; sampling of
lobsters, mussels and a variety
of fauna indicated levels of
contaminants harmful to people
and frequently much higher
than found anywhere else in
scientific reports.
During the sampling of
species on the site's water-
courses, virtually all of the few
varieties of minnows captured
had cancerous lesions on their
bodies. The site may not today
have air emissions of concern,
but the evidence of serious ecological
impact will remain
until the site is cleaned up.
Proving that ecological
harm to the environment also
results in direct human
adverse impacts is still decades
away but most rational people
would prefer to see real actions
to reverse and remove the causes
and impacts.
Mr. McDonald's "knowledgeable"
Kiwanis convention person, who presumably,
worked on Love Canal and considered
the tar ponds a puddle
in comparison, must be suffering
waterway envy. Love Canal
is a 6.5 hectare site with 20,000
tonnes of contaminants, albeit
very nasty ones; the-tar ponds
and the coke ovens site are 103
hectares and have 1.2 million
tonnes of contaminated sediments and soils.
Love Canal's costs have
exceeded $250 million US, and
so far the site has been only
capped. It is still on the U.S.
Environmental Protection
Agency list of sites to be remediated.
Mind you, this was the
first of the Superfund sites,
and every mistake possible was
made. Since then, the environmental
cleanup industry has
learned how to do cleanups
safely and efficiently.
A well-engineered design of
proposed cleanup options for
Sydney should cost no more
than $350 million and take no
longer than seven years. Once
the sediments and soils have
been dehydrated and pelletized ;
in an emission-controlled facility
on the site, the hydrocarbon-rich
concentrates can be
transported to whatever facility
is chosen for co-combustion
in a manner that is safer than
that now employed to transport
fuel to that type of facility.
JAG did not create the perception
that Sydney is a dangerous
place to live. That
impression was well under way
before JAG existed. To my
knowledge, no public statement
by JAG ever added to it.
Some high-profile "environmentalists"
have been very creative with the
facts in their efforts to
get action out of governments.
Some media stories
tended to linger on negative
aspects of the tar ponds story,
neglecting all the positive ones.
One out-of-town newspaper
writer in particular was persistently inaccurate.
JAG had no control over
what these people said or
wrote. If Mr. McDonald has a
problem with how Sydney has
been portrayed in the media,
he should take it up with the
people responsible.
The saddest thing about his
article is the eagerness to give
up control of a vital aspect of
the future of Cape Breton
Regional Municipality to some
nameless, faceless technocrat
who lives and works somewhere else.
Surely by now we have had enough of
that approach.
The younger generation has
grasped that we must make our
own way in the world, and to do
that we need local control over
our own destiny. Those of us
who do not plan to help should
stay out of the way.
Francis Sirois of North Sydney is
a long-serving
member of the Joint Action Group.
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