Randle Reef team seeks $23 million

[Spiel]

Randle Reef team seeks $23 million

 

 

November 21st, 2008

Jackson Hayes, Hamilton Spectator

 

 

The team behind the Randle Reef cleanup project is still looking for $23 million, but remains confident it will be able to bury the toxic sediment by 2019.

 

Comments about the budget and the $90-million plan to secure and cover up to 630,000 cubic metres of contaminated sediment in Hamilton Harbour were made at a public meeting last night.

 

The project team was on hand to answer questions about the process and possible impact of the planned nine years of construction.

 

Project manager Roger Santiago, who said Environment Canada would not let him answer questions from the news media, told the assembly the Hamilton Port Authority and the city are working on raising the $30-million local share.

 

“We are looking at stakeholder groups and there is a large amount of materials required,” he said, noting industries could donate steel and gravel instead of cash.

 

The plan is to surround the area of heaviest coal tar contamination, roughly 7.5 hectares beside U.S. Steel Canada’s Hamilton Works, with a large wall. Sediment would be dredged from elsewhere in the harbour, dumped into the structure and capped with clean fill.

 

 

 

Re: ‘Randle Reef team seeks $23 million’ (Nov. 19)

 

The City of Hamilton is being asked to come up with $23 million to cover its share of cleaning up Randle Reef. The Ontario and federal governments have agreed to put $30 million each toward the cleanup cost of $90 million.

 

Hamilton is being treated unfairly. On Jan. 28, 2007, the federal government announced it and the province of Nova Scotia would spend $400 million on the cleanup of the Sydney tar ponds, $280 million from Canada and $120 million from Nova Scotia.

 

Previously, Canada spent $66 million on environmental studies and other cleanup attempts on the ponds. The City of Sydney, with a population of 26,000, is not being asked to contribute to the cleanup.

 

Hamilton’s municipal tax base is not designed to carry out the cleanup of international waters, the bottoms of the Great Lakes. This is the role of the provincial and federal governments.

 

Hamilton should not need to go with an outstretched hand for the cleanup of Randle Reef, the second-worst pollution spot in Canada next to the tar ponds. It is the duty of the upper levels of government. It was the violation of federal and provincial laws that allowed this mess to accumulate.

 

Hamilton has been burdened enough with downloading. The federal government needs to be held to the same standard as in Sydney, N.S. It should claim 70 per cent of the cleanup of Randle Reef and let the city take care of what the city was designed to do.

 

One-third of the surface would be planted to encourage wildlife use, and Cheriene Vieira from the Ontario Ministry of the Environment said the remaining two-thirds would be asphalted for use as a docking and container facility.

 

Federal and provincial governments have already committed $30 million each, leaving the team to scrounge up the last $30 million.

 

The HPA has agreed to kick in $7 million, but the economic crisis and Hamilton’s budget squeeze have some questioning the chances of securing the remaining $23 million.

 

Brent Kinnaird of the HPA said it was confident despite the market downturn. “We’re just waiting to see who else will be able to come to the table.”

 

Construction is slated to start in April 2010.

 

Bruce Mackenzie,

 

Hamilton