REDEVELOPMENT OF ANOTHER CONTAMINATED SITE

Saturday's Waterloo Region Record advises us of yet another former contaminated factory site being turned into residential housing, namely condominiums. The title of the article is "Condo project starts at old Kanmet Foundry". Waterloo Region seem to be front and centre in this process which would include all three of our biggest cities. Certainly the contaminated Sunar and Canbar properties in Waterloo as well as the recently cleaned up site of Pannill Veneer on Louisa St. in Kitchener are examples.

What I feel lacking is transparency and accountability. Our municipal, regional and provincial governments seem unwilling to hold these business owners accountable and responsible for the contamination of both their property and of public property including air and groundwater. The Kanmet site has sat idle for over twenty years with foundry sands and buried tanks left behind in the natural environment. Rather obviously our politicians have written pollution laws that are either riddled with loopholes or which are simply not enforced. I suspect that it is a combination of both and it's not by accident.

Money rules and the making of more money for indiviuals rules all decisions and legislation. If the city for example aren't willing or able to chase down the owners of Kanmet to clean up their mess, then they pretend that the contamination hasn't left the site or won't leave the site. Then they wait for a developer to express an interest and the negotiations begin. How much cleanup is the developer willing to pay for and how much public tax money will get thrown into the pot to subsidize that development.

Here is where the transparency issue exists. How much of the technical cleanup data and reports are readily available to the public, including nearby neighbours? How much of this data is made available to the new purchasers or are they kept completely in the dark? If it is our provincial Ministry of the Environment who make the final decision as to what is clean enough then we are in trouble. Their credibility is in the dumpster due in part to their willingness to deceive the public and repeatedly minimize all environmental issues, probably for political reasons.

Here in Waterloo Region our dependency on groundwater is well documented. What is not well documented is the extent of industrial pollution of our public groundwater. Whether it be the William St. wells in Waterloo, the long closed Lancaster Wellfield in Kitchener, the closed Forwell wells near Breslau; huge issues at the Middleton wellfield in Cambridge, nearby wells at Bishop St. or the complete shutdown of the wellfields in Elmira; we are in big trouble and the continuing legacy of allowing industrial owners to abandon and walk away from their pollution is a big part of that.