Frederick Street wasn't exactly as Dr. John Hamm remembered it when he revisited the area recently, after several years of absence.
The provincial Tory leader says he used to visit the Frederick Streat area of Whitney Pier as a youngster.
"I had an aunt I used to visit there, several years ago as a child," he told the Cape Breton Post Saturday. "At that time, of course, the coke ovens were fully operational."
Hamm toured the Frederick Street area June 30, the day after the provincial legislature recessed for the summer.
"It's extremely disturbing that people are living in that area, surrounded by these toxins," he said.
Quick action is required on the part of government, Hamm said, to alleviate any potential health hazard the residents of Frederick Street may be facing.
He referred to a preliminary report released last week by a consortium of Cape Breton engineering companies known as Cape Breton Environmental Group, which revealed elevated levels of arsenic and other toxins in the Frederick Street brook. More results are expected this week. Testing was carried out after residents of the street noticed a yellow-colored goo oozing from a bank near the brook in May.
"There's not much point having levels set if you're going to ignore them," Hamm noted.
"There's two things that have to be looked at: the acute (immediate) health effects on the people living in the area and the accumulated effects, if it is discovered there were high levels of toxins in the area for the last number of years."
Frederick Street residents are being tested for contamination by the provincial health department. Hamm said once those tests results are released, and if any of the residents' blood tests show signs of toxins, "they must be moved."
Residents of the street have repeatedly asked to be relocated, but the governmet has not made any decision on if and when they will be moved.
Hamm hass written to provincial environment minister Don Downe, asking for an immediate health risk assessment and the development of an action plan which would be implemented immediately, "should it be determined that the residents are, in fact, at risk."
Frederick Street borders the north side of the former coke ovens site, part of the , which contains the Sydney tar ponds -- 700,000 tonnes of highly toxic sludge left behind from nearly a century of steelmaking. The area is now fenced in, with human health hazard signs posted.

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