The tar ponds “clean-up” will not work
CBC News announced today that the clean up of the tar ponds has begun. The country’s worst toxic waste site will be completely remediated by the mid-1990s.
Sorry. Wrong press release. That was the one from 1986 announcing the first failed clean-up. The incinerator that didn’t work.
On March 23, 2010, the most recent failed clean up has begun. This time the plan is to bury the 700,000 tons of toxic waste, tons of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) including hot spots of PCBs, in concrete. The contaminated site consists of one hundred acres, and it is not really ponds, rather it is an estuary. So the water flow is supposed to be diverted and the sediments de-watered as the concrete is stirred in. There will be no clean up of contaminated backyards or basements (with high levels of arsenic and lead). Only those areas inside the fence on the lands destroyed by coke-ovens and steel mills will be the focus of a $400 million clean up that will fail.
As I write this, I know there will be howls of protest from the true believers in this solution. “This is,” as the project manager said on CBC today, “an effective method. It's used worldwide; it's proven what it does.”
The federal and provincial governments have chosen to ignore all the evidence that it is nothing of the kind.
The first problem was that in the course of the $62 million Joint Action Group (JAG) process, the citizens of Sydney said they did not want this approach. They opted for a real clean-up in which the sediments would be removed and actually cleaned, removing PCBs. That technology exists. It was developed for use in cleaning soils contaminated in Alberta Tar Sands operations.
Many technologies were studied in the 10-year JAG process. Whenever they tried bench-scale testing of adding cement to the tar ponds sediments, it didn’t work. Instead of hardening with time, the tests showed it weakened.
There was a joint Federal-Provincial Environmental Assessment Panel in the spring and summer of 2006. The Sydney Tar Ponds Agency pitched its bury-in-concrete solution. It is a technology called “solidification and stabilization.” Experts came to testify. The most knowledgeable was Dr. G. Fred Lee -- the man who actually wrote the U.S. EPA specifications for how to use S/S technology.
Dr. Lee explained why it could not work. Solidification and stabilization only work in waste sites where the sediments are capable of binding to concrete and hardening. The tar ponds sediments are about 50% coal. In chemical terms, that is high organic content. There is not an example anywhere in the world of using S/S technology on sediments with high organic content such as in the tar ponds.
The Federal Provincial Panel Report agreed. “The Panel is not convinced that the solidification/stabilization technology is proven for use in the Tar Ponds context -- that is to be applied to organic contaminants in organically rich sediments in an estuary with potential groundwater and seawater influx.”
The Panel made many recommendations. No money should go to the STPA until it could prove the technology could work. Every move of the STPA should be monitored. None of the recommendations were followed. In fact, I doubt either the federal or provincial ministers even read the report.
I had hoped that when the New Democrats won the provincial election in June 2009, they would implement the panel’s recommendations. Not a chance. Within days of the election, the Dexter government signed the same deal drafted by the previous Conservative government.
The waste of money ($80 million on the first failed incinerator, $62 million on the JAG process and now $400 million) should be enough to make every Canadian livid. But it is the health impacts that make me want to weep. Ignored is the on-going grim reality of health problems from living in neighbourhoods contaminated with toxic waste, soon to be worsened as the toxic volatile organics move from the drying sediments, cross the street (the tar ponds are surrounded with residential areas) and start making people sick. The human health impact of the tar ponds continues to be ignored; it is that that should make us join the people of Sydney in demanding a real clean up.
But the people of Sydney are tired. And after more than two decades of failed clean ups and false hopes, they are too exhausted to scream in protest. The polluters walk away. The contracts are issued. And nothing will be cleaned up.
(For details, check my book, co-authored with Maude Barlow, FrederickStreet: Life and Death on Canada’s Love Canal or go towww.safecleanup.com)
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Was the building of a
Was the building of a hazardous waste landfill site elsewhere considered and rejected? (Lined with bentonite clay, designed with water drainage leading to water treatment. And gas outlets to gather, burn and scrub volatile emissions?)
For ten years, the Joint
For ten years, the Joint Action Group, a citizen/government panel, oversaw the search for a clean up method. Just about everything was considered. The option you propose was discussed, but was not one of the front-runners. The first version of what the government approved was solidification and stabilization combined with incineration. Then, due to public outrage, the incineration option was dropped. The public preferred a full clean up, including neighbourhoods, with the removal of contaminated soil, "cleaning" the soil of PAHs leaving a smaller volume of heavy metals and PCBs. The goal of returning the estuary to a healthy watercourse was preferred by the public and rejected by the government. Even though a company offered a fixed bid to do the work within the envelope of approved funding, the government agencies rejected the offer, pronounced any alternative, other than storing in cement too costly, and proceeded to ignore the Panel recommendations.
A tragedy and total waste of
A tragedy and total waste of money.
Thanks for the summaries. As you point out, hydrocarbons will absolutely not bind to mineral-based cement. They will migrate out easily and also weaken the cement making it friable. It will compound the problem because now there will be more volume and weight of contaminated admixture to deal with.
“If you pay to much for something, you lose just a little. If you don’t pay enough, you lose it all. Because the thing you bought does not do what you intended it to do.”
For the metals, it depends what state they are in. Oxides may bind to the cement, but if they are already leaching out into surrounding soils, they are likely not oxides, but elemental - water soluble. If they are organo-metallic compounds then they are even more toxic as they can move through the human body faster.
You can’t destroy metals, just move them around and contain them. And similarly with carbon; you can change its form to a less toxic compound, but can’t destroy it. Incineration does not have a good record of management. Metals have almost always ended up in the air. Complete combustion should produce CO2 and other oxides, but its never complete. If you scrub, you still have to do something with the contaminants. You can clean soils with surfactants/solvents, then recycle the solvents, but again you still have to do something with the contaminants.
That’s why a properly engineered bentonite clay-lined hazardous waste landfill site is still a necessity to have in any region; to first contain contaminants. Its not a pretty solution until people realize that matter can’t be destroyed, just modified and managed. (Of course the ideal is not to create high concentrations of toxins in the first place.)