COAL TAR IN KITCHENER

The story was in the K-W Record on February 2, 2012 and was titled "Settlement studied in downtown coal tar lawsuit". This refers to a lawsuit filed three years ago against the City of Kitchener by Everest Colleges who rent a city owned building on the corner of Gaukel and Charles St.. The initial problem revolved around the 2007, nearly $20 million cleanup of coal tar under the old post office which was formerly a coal gasification plant. The College alleges that they lost students due to the cleanup and foul odours and that they lost parking revenue and had costs associated with air and water quality tests they took to protect students.

For me this case like so many other municipal coal tar problems and cleanups is almost a classic political story. The coal gasification plant operated from 1882 until 1958. It left behind massive quantities of toxic sludge which had been dumped into shallow pits. Coal tar contains not only the usual suspects such as benzene, toluene and xylenes but also a number of much worse components such as bezo a pyrene. Perhaps in 1882 we didn't know better but by 1958 we certainly did. Obviously city fathers (ie. politicians) made a shortsighted decision not to spend a half a million dollars then for cleanup in favour of leaving it for the next batch of politicians to have to resolve. Twenty million dollars later and perhaps another million to settle with Everest College plus legal expenses now versus doing it initially. All these costs aren't even considering the environmental and human health damage over the decades. Do you really think the groundwater in the area wasn't contaminated? Do you really think there wasn't some vapours over the decades in buildings on top of that awful mess? Coal tar residues courtesy of coal gasification plants have been removed from many municipalities over the decades including from Waterloo where we get our water piped in from. Those municipalities who have as yet not cleaned up, have ticking time bombs which most probably are negatively affecting the air and water of local residents.