Cape Breton Post
September 2, 1998
National chairwoman stunned by
tar ponds
BY LAUREL MUNROE
Cape Breton Post
Maude Barlow
said she was moved almost to tears as she toured Canada's worst toxic nightmare
Tuesday.
"I was stunned.
It looked like your ugliest nightmares of mars," said the national chairperson
of the Council of Canadians after she visited parts of the Muggah Creek
Watershed area, including the tar ponds, former coke ovens site and municipal
landfill.
The 100,000
member strong Council of Canadians has taken on the clean-up of the watershed
area and the plight of the residents of Frederick Street in Whitney Pier
as issues, prompting Barlow's visit to Sydney this week.
"When governments
aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing - which is the situation
we're dealing with here - you've got to have friends, other citizens and
political friends, who'll come in and say 'look, you're not alone and we'll
take the word back out and we'll raise hell until the money that's needed
to get this cleaned up is there,' " she said at a question-and-answer session
on Frederick Street following her tour.
Barlow, who
has toured toxic sites around the world, said the watershed area is "as
bad or worse as anything I've seen - definitely the worst in Canada," noting
it will take years to clean up the site, no matter what kind of technology
is used.
There is a
lesson to be learned from the situation, she added.
"We can never
let this happen again. We can never have this thinking that people
don't matter and communities don't matter and the Earth doesn't matter,"
Barlow said.
The residents
of Frederick Street - who have been trying to get government to relocate
them since high levels of toxins were found in a yellow goo oozing from
a brook bank near the street earlier this year - have been very brave,
said barlow.
"Your story
is out there and it will help other people," she told them.
The Council
of Canadians advocates what it calls a new form of citizen politics, Barlow
explained.
"It's our
job to get the story out there across the country," she said. "We'll
raise the issue so that it embarrasses all levels of government until they
have to do something and if we have to embarrass our government in front
of other countries we'll do it."
Juanita McKenzie,
spokesperson for the Frederick Street residents group, said the council's
support is appreciated.
"It will give
us more exposure. Maybe there is someone out there who will shame
our government into helping us."
Frederick Street Residents hire Lawyer
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