Money would be better spent going directly to help the region

Letter to the editor by Debbie Ouellette
Cape Breton Post
Wed., May 14, 2008

Some residents are worried about the cost if the appeal of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality’s lawsuit goes ahead. Mayor John Morgan should ask for millions of dollars from the tar ponds cleanup fund to help with the case and to get CBRM out of the hole.

The federal and provincial governments have no problem putting millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in places that are a complete waste: $400 million for the tar ponds agency is one example. The money would be better spent helping CBRM.

In the last few months, work was done on the cooling pond. The cooling pond is still a mix of contaminated sludge, slag, cement, water, and finally fill on top. A cake mix is all we got for over $4 million, not a cleanup whatsoever.

Let’s see what happens to the cooling pond over time. Will this cake mix start separating, breaking up and cracking from all the weather we have and from flooding?

A real cleanup would not have been a waste and would have been permanent, unlike this cake mix, which will be contaminated forever.

And for $9 million, the tar ponds agency will construct a building to wash debris dug out of the tar ponds so that it can be disposed of in a landfill. How clean does it have to be to go in a landfill?

This is a lot of money to waste. Where does it end? Remember, there is no end to the taxpayer’s money.

Debbie Ouellette
Sydney