Sierra Club of Canada has received funding to conduct a "Toxic Exchange" project. This project will run from the fall of 1997 though Spring 1998, and will involve Cape Breton and the community of Fort Valley, Georgia. The community in Fort Valley has a toxic site which is a result of Canadyne-Georgia Corp. dumping the worst of toxic contamination more than a decade ago when it began cleaning up the old Woolfolk pesticide plant.

Fran Morrison, Sierra Cape Breton, will be the Project Coordinator locally, John McCown, Sierra Club Project Coordinator in Macon, Georgia, both of whom will be assisted by Sierra Club personnel in Ottawa. This truly a community-driven grassroots project to seek and share knowledge with another community.

A delegation of 7 people will be traveling from Cape Breton to Georgia in December 1997, and will be meeting with various community groups there; this will be a fact-finding expedition to learn about another terribly contaminated site and to find out any similarities between theirs and our site, i.e. size and scope of site, similar health problems, similar problems in getting cleanup, what the community interest, input and support (or lack thereof) is, and also what the economic conditions of the area are. Each traveler will write of their experience in Georgia and submit to Sierra Club and the entire project will be video-taped and well-documented for future reference and use by community and or media. In the spring of 1998, a delegation of 6-8 people from Fort Valley will travel to Sydney to view the and meet with various community groups.

Prospective travelers from Cape Breton are Dan & Clothilde Yakimchuk and (residents of Whitney Pier); John Martell, a steelworker who grew up in Ashby; Shirley Christmas (representing the Mi'Kmaq community), Sr. Ellen Donovan (a spiritual representative); Mark Biagi, a marine biologist (presently residing within the area), and Sharon Lee Carter (an environmental health student from UCCB). Elizabeth May, Executive Director of Sierra Club of Canada, will meet the Cape Breton delegation in Fort Valley Georgia.

>Muggah Creek will prepare a report for the media to relay to the community upon the return of the travelers from Georgia.
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