The Toronto Star, has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.
Sid Slavin can barely recognize the spot where he spent 37 years toiling in the hot, smelly furnaces of one of Canada’s largest steel plants.
Where thousands of workers once forged much of Canada’s rails, rivets, bolts, nails and wire at the steel plant and coke ovens that provided the area with an economic lifeline for nearly 100 years, only grassy fields and a monument to those who lost their lives working at the plant remain.
The dramatic transformation is the culmination of a 10-year plan to clean up the former site of the Sydney tar ponds, an industrial wasteland of toxic sludge left behind after the plant closed in 2001.
With the third and final phase of environmental remediation of the site underway, what was once an infamous urban blight will be home to a freshwater river running alongside green parklands.
“When I first started, there was no dialogue whatsoever on environmental issues,” said Slavin, 73, who quit high school at 17 to work at the mill. “If any mild complaints were heard, we were told, ‘If there’s no smoke, there’s no boloney.’ It was so true.”
There was no doubt among the steelworkers that their occupation was a dangerous one, recalled Slavin, who retired in 1994. One misstep could land you in hospital, or worse. Three hundred workers died at the plant as a result of various accidents over the years. Exposure to gases from burning coal and smelting steel was a regular occurrence.
By 2000, half of Slavin’s former co-workers were dead from cancer. A series of studies by Health Canada and the People’s Health Commission in 2003 found higher rates of cancer and exposure to chemicals, such as arsenic and lead, among those who lived near the tar ponds.
Compared to many of his friends, Slavin got off lucky. He’s lost a third of his hearing and some of his sight, but apart from that, he’s healthy, he says. He’s also relieved that what’s being left behind is a legacy to be proud of.
Remediation of the site began in 2007 when the federal and provincial governments committed $400 million after more than a decade of proposals, false starts and community infighting.
Cleanup of the 31-hectare site involves permanently containing sediment polluted with coal tar, heavy metals, PCBs, volatile organic compounds and hundreds of other toxic chemicals from nearly a century of steel production. The black sludge is mixed with cement, then hardened and buried, before being “capped” by an engineered mix of clay and soil.
At the former site of the coke ovens — a 68-hectare plot just east of the tar ponds consisting of steel plant slag, coal tar, and ash — pollution had seeped all the way down to the bedrock. From 1901 to 1988, more than half a million tonnes of soil were contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons, while coal tar in a storage lagoon seeped into 2,500 tonnes of soil.
For the rest of this article, please go to the Toronto Star website: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1170241–sydney-tar-ponds-revitalization-gives-nova-scotia-community-new-lease-on-life