Sydney Tar Ponds
To the east of the coke ovens, and uphill from them, an abandoned municipal dump served as an additional source of contaminated groundwater, or leachate.
While almost all of the contaminants derived from coal, the Tar Ponds include two pockets containing an estimated total of 3.8 metric tonnes of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
[11] Sydney had everything needed for steelmaking, including locally mined coal, nearby iron ore from Bell Island and limestone from Aguathuna (both in Newfoundland), a good harbour for shipping, and plenty of cooling water.
By the mid-1960s, Hawker Siddeley began to close money-losing subsidiaries and identified DOSCO's coal mines and steel mill as candidates for closure.
[13] The government of Canada expropriated DOSCO's coal mines at the same time, as well as the coke ovens that produced the pollution flowing into the Tar Ponds, naming this operation Cape Breton Development Corporation (DEVCO).
Domtar ceased operations in Sydney in 1962 abandoning its storage tanks, waste disposal lagoons, pipes, buildings and equipment.
[9] In 1980, scientists from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans discovered polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a family of chemicals produced by incomplete combustion of organic material, in lobster caught in Sydney Harbour near Muggah Creek.
Despite the fact that these pipes contained a mixture of dangerous, toxic and potentially explosive substances, many were never purged of their contents when the coke ovens operations ceased.
In 1986, Canada and Nova Scotia signed a $34-million agreement to dredge the Tar Ponds and pump the sediments through a mile-long pipeline to a low-temperature incinerator and power plant.
However, the pipeline system proved unable to handle the thick, lumpy Tar Ponds sludge, and the fluid-bed incinerator was hit by a series of technical problems.
In 1996, Gerry O'Malley, the Minister of Science and Technology, proposed a plan to bury the Tar Ponds under slag procured from the steel mill.
[3] Also in 1996, the federal, provincial, and municipal governments jointly funded a community organization, the Joint Action Group (JAG), with a mandate to "educate, involve and empower the community, through partnerships, to determine and implement acceptable solutions for Canada's worst hazardous waste site and to assess and address the impact on human health.
Bruno Marcocchio, founder of the Citizen Liaison Committee, complained that the JAG was only being used "to give credibility to back room, politically motivated manipulation.
On May 12, 2004, the Governments of Canada and Nova Scotia announced a 10-year, $400 million CAD plan to clean up the Sydney Tar Ponds and Coke Ovens.
The plan[19] called for PCB-contaminated sediments to be destroyed in an approved PCB incinerator to be set up temporarily at a decommissioned industrial facility five kilometres east of the coke ovens.
Sierra Club Canada opposed plans to incinerate the PCB materials in favour of novel destruction technologies such as hydrogen reduction and soil washing.
[20] Through the winter of 2005, controversy continued as to the type of environmental impact assessment the Government of Canada should require for the Tar Ponds cleanup.
The Government of Nova Scotia, the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, and a broad coalition of local business, labor, and health organizations favored a comprehensive study, which has half as many steps as a panel review.
The Sierra Club of Canada favored a panel review as the only way to ensure necessary scrutiny of plans to incinerate PCB contaminated material, and to guarantee consideration of alternative technologies.
After decades of study, the federal and Nova Scotia governments concluded that the best way to deal with the Sydney Tar Ponds was to stabilize, solidify, and contain the contaminated material.
