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Campaign to reconsider CIP gains momentum
Eighty people gather at press conference in Hawkesbury; lawsuit threatened as Northern Watertek explains alternative plan
HAWKESBURY — A panel of engineers, lawyers and environmental activists made an impassioned plea to Hawkesbury council and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources on March 25, urging them to reconsider their plan for the CIP lagoon.
About 80 people attended the press conference at La Cité Golf Club in Hawkesbury, which was hosted by the Hawkesbury-based citizens group la Corporation de la Bordure Riveraine.
René Berthiaume, the president of the corporation, was joined by environmental lawyer David Donnelly. (go to audio clip)
Representatives from Northern Watertek claimed they could provide a full restoration of the government-owned lagoon for $20 million, the amount Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources estimates it will take to do its planned partial restoration.
There were also presentations by Delphine Hasle of the Ottawa Riverkeeper group and real estate agent Michel Paquette.
All presenters argued that the current CIP restoration option — which would transfer contaminated sludge from one side of the lagoon to the other and be buried there — would amount to folding the pollution in half, but keeping it on the site.
While this option has already been approved by Hawkesbury’s council, the corporation wants this decision to be reversed.
Donnelly said the Corporation de la Bordure Riveraine would consider launching a lawsuit against the Ontario government if Option Two (the partial remediation) goes ahead.
He called Hawkesbury’s current lagoon an affront to residents’ environmental rights and said it was critical to Hawkesbury’s future economic development that the pollution be removed.
Donnelly said: “I live right by Lake Ontario and for most communities along the lake— Toronto, Pickering, Burlington, Mississauga —the exercise of trying to revitalize their waterfront is an exercise in fantasy. But you here have a great opportunity. Picture what Hawkesbury could be like — you have a golden opportunity to get something that most people don’t have in Ontario. And that is a beautiful waterfront with businesses and residences. You can revitalize your town; you can establish a great economy here. But to do it you need a complete clean up of your waterfront. No one has ever revitalized their waterfront with a partial remediation.”
In 2003, Donnelly lead a successful lawsuit on behalf of the Huron-Wendat first peoples against the Ontario Realty Corporation. He is one of two lawyers in Ontario to have successfully sued the government for a failure to perform a proper environmental assessment.
(go to audio clip)
Jeffrey A. White of Northern Watertek, which has proposed an alternative solution to the CIP lagoon, said the company has performed waterfront restorations in the Northwest Territories, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta, as well as New Zealand, Korea, Japan and other parts of the world.
“We are a technology firm, we don’t possess a shovel or a bulldozer, we leave that to local contractors and local engineers. We do possess the award-winning technology that would apply here,” he said.
White said the Option Two currently approved by MNR would still contaminate the Ottawa River. Furthermore, by folding the pollution in half and burying the sludge, White said it would increase the concentration of pollutants by a factor of two.
“What has been proposed is essentially what is there now, just a little more concentrated. It simply won’t work,” he said. “I am not being facetious in anyway: Our assessment and our expertise is that it’s not going to work,” he said.
“We have done the research, we have been working on this for five years, It’s not just a matter of opinion, we can prove it,” he said. (go to audio clip)Janusz Szpaczynski is a chemical engineer, a mechanical engineer and a biologist employed by Northern Watertek. He says he had been performing experiments for the past four years using samples of vegetation and sludge from the lagoons. His conclusion is that burying the sludge would not help.
“Why is it taking so long to biodegrade these solids? The answer is oxygen,” he said.
“If you build a landfill on top of this lagoon there will be no oxygen and no biodegradation at all,’ he said.
Szpaczynski said Northern Watertek’s plan would involve plants and natural systems; the pollution would be removed and plants with deep root systems would be planted in the lagoon. The plan would also increase the flow of water to the region and restore surrounding islands to their 1965 state. While the government’s plan would require monitoring for 25 years, Szpaczynski said Northern Watertek’s process would allow fishing and swimming in this part of the Ottawa River within in two years. (go to audio clip)
A call for reconsideration of the partial remediation plan was also issued by Ottawa Riverkeeper representative Delphine Astley, who read a statement prepared by the group’s executive director Meredith Brown who was unable to attend due to illness.
“I would like to commend the town of Hawkesbury for tirelessly pressuring for the cleanup of the CIP lagoon site. It has already been about 30 years since the site was abandoned and it is criminal that the taxpayers now have to pay the price for this legacy of mismanagement and pollution,” read the statement.
“The approval that was granted to the CIP lagoon in the 1960s would never be approved today. The lagoons have negatively affected the flow and the quality of the Ottawa River. I understand that local residents and government agencies are eager to get started on this remediation project. However, it seems that we need to take another look at the objective of the remediation project and revaluate the proposed alternative. If it is possible to clean–up the site to pre-operating condition, this alternative should be given top priority. (…) We are being told by credible engineers that a full site clean-up is possible for the same price as the partial clean-up, $20 million. If we are offered a partial clean-up or a full clean-up for the same price, which would we choose? Seems like an easy question,” she said. (go to audio clip)
Berthiaume promised there would be more meetings in the future.
After the press conference, some citizens stayed for up to an hour to discuss the case and ask questions.
Hawkesbury councillors Gilles Roch Greffe, Michel Beaulne, and Sylvain Dubé were also in attendance and stayed after the presentation to talk with residents.
“We are participating, we are here to hear what is being said,” said Dubé.