Public learns about cooling pond project
By Erin Pottie
Cape Breton Post
Tues., Dec. 11, 2007
Sydney - The public was invited to
meet the experts working to clean up
the cooling pond, located in front of
the Sydney Tar Ponds Agency office.
An open house was held at the
Ashby Legion on State Street, Sydney
and included demos of air monitoring,
cooling pond description and
project experts who helped answer
questions about the project remediation.
The Sydney cooling pond is a manmade,
circular body of water and
sludge, located on Inglis Street. The
function of the pond was to cool
water once used by Sysco’s rolling
mills.
"We’re starting the solidification in
the next week or two, (we’re) just
doing some of the preliminary work,"
said Sydney Tar Ponds Agency CEO
Frank Potter. "It involves taking water
off the pond, treating the sludge in
the pond, removing some of the
structure (and) some creosote timbers
that are all around the structure."
Members of Earth Tech, the
agency’s design team which has created
water treatment recipes for the
solidification process, were available
Monday 3-7 p.m., along with representatives
from All-Tech, which produces
air quality detection.
The agency also included a demo
of its webcam which rotates and has
a 24-hour live feed of the cooling
pond, which can be accessed from
the website.
"It’s good that the (agency) is giving
the chance for the public to see
what’s going on over there on the
property. Finally we’re getting things
going, we’ve been waiting since 1986,
21 years, finally they’re starting to
move stuff," said Dave Ervin, a concerned
citizen and Atlantic Coastal
Action Program-Cape Breton board
member.
The project set to finish in March,
will include water treatment and the
eventual solidification and stabilization
of the sludge.
epottie@cbpost.com
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