PUBLICATIONCape Breton Post
DATE Fri 25 Jun 1999
EDITION FINAL
SECTION/CATEGORY Comment
PAGE NUMBER4
STORY LENGTH 674
HEADLINE: JAG told again to move along
The issue: Another consortium is introduced.
We suggest: Pace is the problem.
The Sydney business community -- or at least the downtown-based
service and retail part of it -- has donned its hip waders once
again and slogged into the tarry politics of environmental
cleanup.
It was about seven months ago that downtown business people played
usher at a news conference for the partnership of International
Technologies Corporation and Jacques Whitford Environmental to
present the public with the outline of a $120 million plan to
clean up the tar ponds. The proposal included firing up the idle
tar ponds incinerators, but the flames that day were coming from
the then chairman of the Joint Action Group on the Muggah Creek
cleanup who showed up to roast the proponents and their local
supporters for attempting an end run around JAG's technology
evaluation and selection process.
Bucky Buchanan was later lauded by JAG members for confronting the
would-be queue-jumpers.
Not surprisingly, the latest proposal also includes incineration
-- probably the most divisive issue running through JAG right from
the start in 1996. A German-led consortium, Illinova Resource
Recovery, says it can turn Sydney's PCB- and PAH-laced 700,000 or
so tonnes of tar ponds sludge, blended with coal, into
commercially burnable industrial fuel. The ballpark price for the
five- to 10-year project is $200 million, though Sydney's
experience with tar ponds cleanup suggests any preliminary figure
should be multiplied by some generous factor.
Illinova proponents say the processed and blended sludge could be
used in a Cape Breton power plant such as Point Aconi. But,
perhaps as a soporific for the anti-incineration crowd, they also
say the fuel could be exported to the United States.
Members of the Sydney Business Improvement District Commission,
which played host for the show, expressed some enthusiasm for the
process, which is actually being used on a much smaller tar site
in Germany. But, of course, BIDC is not in a credible position to
make any specific evaluations or endorsements except in the rather
perfunctory way in which business lobby groups typically do, as in
the case of the Industrial Cape Breton Board of Trade's zealous
lobbying on behalf of the Medcan telephone triage proposal.
Getting briefed and button-holed by corporate salesman looking to
tap into government funding with the help of a local chorus of men
in suits is not the same as deciding whether this is the right
approach.
And, to be fair, neither the Illinova proponents nor the cheering
section expected to march out of the news conference into a tar
ponds contract. In fact, there's a tactical risk for any company
that chooses to try the public pressure route. We know those JAG
folks can get their backs up. And, as interim JAG program
co-ordinator Germaine LeMoine points out, her group is the only
show in town. Governments at all three levels have bought into
what's affectionately called ``the process.''
However, JAG should not rest too glibly on that by turning up its
nose at all pressure efforts that come from outside. That's
arrogance. While it's easy to dismiss the BIDC as an ineffectual
committee of downtown merchants who don't know what they're
talking about, the fact is that BIDC's basic complaint about ``the
process'' -- that it's just taking too damn long -- strikes a
resonant chord in the community that JAG purports to represent.
For the sake of maintaining an essential humility, JAG must bear
in mind that while governing politicians have indeed bought into
``the process'' -- one hopes because they believe it will
eventually work -- the pace is also exquisitely convenient.
Federal Environment Minister Christine Stewart, in Sydney at the
end of May to help announce $62 million in new JAG-related
funding, assured the community once again that Ottawa is in for
the long haul: ``We will complete the job.'' That's nice, but of
course it's highly unlikely she'll be the environment minister
next time around.
Yes, governments seem quite happy with JAG. So far, it's not
costing them any real serious money.
