Province Urges Ottawa: Start Cleanup Now
SYDNEY TAR PONDS AGENCY--Province Urges Ottawa: Start Cleanup Now
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.
Mr. Clarke is responding to a statement federal Environment Minister David Anderson released Saturday, March 27, 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,” Mr. 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 Mr. Clarke. “The Tar Ponds have been studied to death. It’s time to clean them up.”
Mr. 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,” Mr. Clarke said. “If 70-30 made sense then, why doesn’t it make sense today?”
Most of the Tar Ponds and more than 85 per cent 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.
In a news release, Mr. Anderson said the pollution on federal land arose from provincially owned or regulated industries. He also disputed the origins of the tar cell.
“The regulatory issue is a red herring,” Mr. Clarke said. “The Government of Canada had all the regulatory authority it needed to stop the flow of contaminants into the Tar Ponds.” Mr. Clarke said the province’s information that the tar cell was created during the period of federal ownership in the 1960s and 1970s, “comes from the men who actually ran the plant.”
Mr. Clarke said Sydney’s steel industry was not exclusively a provincial concern. He noted that the federal government played a major role in keeping the steel plant going, with several, multi-million-dollar capital investments, always on an 80-20 or 70-30 federal-provincial cost sharing basis.
The steel plant was a major market for coal produced by the federally owned Cape Breton Development Corporation, and much of its rail output was purchased by the Canadian National, at the time a federal Crown corporation.
“The public doesn’t want to hear more debate,” said Mr. Clarke. “It wants to see cleanup work start.”
Sunday, March 28, 2004 3:55 p.m.