Belleville’s lawyer Harry Dahme at the Environmental Review Tribunal hearing January 11, 2015. (File photo: Mary Thomas/Quinte News)
A consultant has been hired, a work plan is almost in place, but still another step has to be taken before the work plan to clean up the coal tar contamination in Belleville’s harbour area can begin.
The Environmental Review Tribunal met with all parties involved on Thursday, October 6, 2016.
The Ministry of Environment order calls for cleanup to be done in four different areas of Foster Ward.
The city of Belleville and other parties involved in the cleanup have been in mediation for months.
They have now hired consultants Golder and Associates to come up with a work plan and the completion date to be within two years of the original order.
Belleville’s Toronto lawyer Harry Dahme told the Tribunal there are now two work plans – one for the east and west portions, another for the immediate and greater area.
Dahme says there will be soil sampling, examination of the sewer as a migration pathway, installation of new monitoring wells and groundwater and sediment sampling.
Completion date for the report is May of next year.
Dahme says a communications plan will be developed to inform residents of the area of work to be done.
Risk management measures require work beyond the two years in the order.
That change in the time line will now go before the MOE for approval, and that is expected in the near future.
Eight parties have been ordered by the Ministry of Environment to clean up the site where a coal gasification plant had operated in the 1800s.
The provincial order includes Belleville, 105 Pinnacle Limited, Kent D. Hawkins, Darlene Hawkins, Anthony J. McGarvey, 835267 Ontario Inc., Naomi Spiegel and Sidney Spiegel.
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