Along with health, ecoloical concerns are potential legal, financial concerns
by Douglas MacKinlay
To the Editor:
How many of us in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality would build a pantry on top an outhouse pit?
Downtown Sydney, at the junction of Prince Street and the tar ponds, Sobeys is expanding its store on top of something much worse. Benzopyrene, a deadly toxin that is highly volatile, exists at six times "acceptable limits" at that site. A few feet of flooring will separate shoppers from these deadly poisons.
Sobeys plans to "vent" benzopyrene and other gaseous toxins via a pipe throught he store and above the roof, into the air above the shopping centre.
Is this where you want to shop?
There is inadequate concern by CBRM, the Departments of Labour, Environment, and Health, and by Sobeys. CBRM should not have issued a permit for Sobeys to expand. The zoning near the whole must be changed to prevent further construction until a comprehensive cleanup is completed.
The Department of Labour paid little attention to health risks to workers digging at the site. The health ministry has ignored the situation.
The environment department announced there has been "no proven adverse affects" by building atop the contaminated soils of the tar ponds and adjacent areas. Sobeys knows it is putting a concrete cap over one more segment of our toxic legacy, yet capping the tar ponds was soundly and furiously rejected by the sydney community when encapsulation was proposed by governments a few years ago.
The Joint Action Group has quite appropriately given the three levels of government until June 1 to create and implement separation zones around the edges of our toxic legacy. Such a buffer will be meaningless if further commercial or residential construction is permitted near the site. The Sobeys expansion may very well be the last construction near Muggah Creek that is sanctioned by government. It should be stopped now.
Aside of the health and ecological concerns of building shopping shelves atop benzopyrene are the potential legal and financial concerns. A proper cleanup of the tar ponds and adjacent areas will require substantial, deep, and careful digging up and removal of contaminated soils to storage or to a treatment site. Relocation will be necessary, not only for the Frederick Street residents (although, because of their residential proximity, they should be first) but for many other residents and some businesses.
The long-term health of Sydney, its residents and its harbour, requires such relocation and comprehensive cleanup. Compensation will have to be paid to those being relocated.
Allowing the Sobeys expansion to proceed likely increases the bill our governments, with our tax dollars, will eventually have to pay to Sobeys for this compensation.
The announcement by the environmenta department that there are "no proven adverse affects" from selling food a few feet from tonnes of benzopyrene soil and other toxins is particularly disturbing. The ministry is supposed to protect us but it continues issuing permits to pollute instead of abiding by the precautionary principle as mandated by the new Environment Act of Nova Scotia.
The precautionary principle switches the burden of proof from citizens or consumers to prove harm to polluters to prove their projects are safe. This should be especially necessary and enforced when "acceptable limits" are exceeded.
Keeping the onus on citizens and shoppers to prove the apparent dangers, especially when environmental guidelines are exceeded, is old-style thinking that brought us to the ecological mess we are all in (ozone depletion, greenhouse warming, genetic deterioration, toxic foods and backyards).
Environmental campaign draws criticism
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