Province urges Ottawa to start cleanup
SYDNEY - Energy Minister
Cecil Clarke is urging the Government
of Canada to join the
province in an immediate start
to the tar ponds and coke ovens
cleanup.
Clarke was responding to a
statement federal Environment
Minister David Anderson
released Saturday, taking
issue with provincial arguments
for a 70-30, federal-
provincial sharing of cleanup
costs.
"We're confident of the evidence
supporting a 70-30 cost
split," Clarke said. "But the real
question is whether Ottawa is ready
to begin the cleanup now.
"Nova Scotia has put its
money on the table, and we're
ready to start now," said
Clarke. "The tar ponds have
been studied to death. It's time
to clean them up."
Clarke said evidence supporting
a 70-30 sharing of costs
was sufficient on two previous
occasions - in 1986, when
Ottawa and Nova Scotia
embarked on an unsuccessful
project to dig up tar ponds sediment
and burn it in an incinerator,
and in 1999, when the
two governments signed an agreement
on preliminary cleanup projects.
"Everyone agrees this is a
national priority," Clarke said.
"If 70-30 made sense then, why
doesn't it make sense today?"
Most of the tar ponds and
more than 85 percent of the
most serious contaminants
they contain, belong to the
federal government.
On the coke ovens site, a tar
cell containing 25,000 tonnes of
concentrated contaminants
was created during the 1960s
and 1970s, when the Government
of Canada owned and
operated the coke ovens
through its coal mining subsidiary,
the Cape Breton Development Corporation.
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