Clean-up proposal under fire

By John Campbell, Cape Breton Post, Friday-November 20, 1998
A proposal by three community groups aimed at fast-tracking the cleanup of the and creating 100 jobs in the process ran into some heavy going Thursday.

Industrial Cape Breton Board of Trade president Avvie Druker, Rob Jessome of Local 1064 United Steel Workers, and John Morrison of the Sydney Downtown Development Association, ran into a hall of negative reaction at what was billed as a media briefing.

The trio came under their heaviest fire from Bucky Buchanan, chairman of the Joint Action Group (JAG), which is mandated by government to recommend the best method of remediating the ponds, coke oven site and the Sydney landfill.

Buchanan lashed the three community groups for not consulting JAG before going public with a suggested that a newly-formed provincial task force ont he Cape Breton economy be asked to hurry the project along.

The groups want the task force to consider a five-year, $120 million tar ponds cleanup proposal from an international consortium that briefed members of the business community on their process Monday.

Buchanan, speaking from the floor of the packed hotel salon, said JAG is in the process of reviewing submissions from more than 100 firms that say they can do what these companies (International technologies Corp. and Jacques Whitford Environmental Ltd.) claim they can deliver.

Buchanan said he wasn't sure how many of the submissions have been processed and bristled at citizen John Abbass's suggestion that at this rate the cleanup would take 25 years.

Druker said the community is anxious to get on with the job and wondered if it is necessary to evaluate all of the 100-plus proposals on file.

Buchanan said all bidders expect a level playing field, adding there are no quick fixes and all of the watershed's polluted sites have to be dealt with, not just the tar ponds.

"The mandate for the cleanup has been given to JAG," he said, adding "bring it (the consortium's proposal) forward and we'll analyze it."

Beyond that, he said the three groups should join the JAG, noting we'll be willing to dialogue with you bur ... we won't be pushed to defend a technology we can't defend..."

Morrison worried that the community is being "stigmatized" by publicity about the polluted sites. He said it was his understanding a 1995 ITC and Whitford proposal was deemed acceptable except for cost.

The company then came back with a plan to cover the tar ponds over, an option roundly rejected by the community.

Jessome said there are people in JAG who don't want to discuss incineration, "but they're going to have to talk about it."

He said JAG's approval is needed now in order to determine whether the mothballed Superburn incinerators on site can be used in destroying the 700,000 tonnes of sludge.

Bras d'Or businessman John Kearns said he can burn the material at all of the polluted sites, adding he's on the list and will be willing to demonstrate his technology when his turn comes.

No one from the ITC-Whitford consortium was in attendance, or at least didn't speak up if they were in the room, leaving the trio at the table unable to answer technical questions about the proposal - particularly as to how it would deal with PCBs, which can't be dealt with under the Superburn incinerators environmental permit.

JAG plan year away

Maybe a year and a half

By John Campbell, Cape Breton Post, Saturday, November 21, 1998
A recommendation on how best to deal with cleaning up the should be ready within a year or a year and a half.

That was the word Friday from Carl (Bucky) Buchanan, chairman of the Joint Action Group (JAG). Meanwhile, he said, the best way for firms like the ITC-Jacques Whitford consortium to receive consideration is put their name on the vendor list along with more than 100 other firms.

Evaluation of the submissions by a JAG committee dubbed EDGAR is "long and tedious and slow at times," he said, because all issues, health, social and environmental, have to be addressed for the whole watershed, not just the tar ponds.

Buchanan said EDGAR will study the submissions, invite companies to come to Sydney for a closer look at the challenge presented by the tar ponds, coke oven site and the former city landfill.

"Sometimes people are amazed at what kind of problem exists here. They think they can do it but they¹re surprised at how complicated it is, the fact that there are 32 outfalls pumping raw sewage into the tar ponds for instance."

Buchanan said the committee "is careful not to give any company any indication they might have a leg up on the job or not. I personally can't tell you any companies that have actually applied."

That, he said, is what "amazed² him about the speed with which three local groups endorsed the ITC-Jacques Whitford consortium on the strength of a single presentation.

So far, he said, JAG has completed about 170 tasks with six working groups dealing in the course of a three-phase operation with everything from site security to health and environmental studies on the road to remediation.

Return to Main Page

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page