Sydney Tar Ponds - History

History

In 1901, investors from Boston formed the Dominion Iron and Steel Company Limited and opened a major steel works on Sydney Harbour. Sydney had everything needed for steelmaking, including locally mined coal, nearby iron ore from Bell Island and limestone from Aguathuna (both in Newfoundland), a good harbour for shipping, and plenty of cooling water. By 1912, the mill was turning out nearly half of Canada’s steel production.

The steel mill, and the nearby coal mines that fuelled it, operated for nearly a century under a variety of owners including Dominion Steel Company (1912), British Empire Steel Corporation (1921), and Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation (DOSCO) after 1930. An economically failing DOSCO was purchased by A.V. Roe Canada in 1957, which was in turn dissolved, and its assets, including DOSCO, purchased by Hawker Siddeley Canada in 1962. By the mid-1960s, Hawker Siddeley began to close money-losing subsidiaries and identified DOSCO's coal mines and steel mill as candidates for closure. By 1967, DOSCO announced plans to close the mill and began phasing out the coal mines. In response to the threatened loss of thousands of jobs in a region with poor economic prospects, the government of Nova Scotia expropriated the steel mill, renaming it Sydney Steel Corporation (SYSCO). The government of Canada expropriated DOSCO's coal mines at the same time, as well as the coke ovens that produced the pollution flowing into the Tar Ponds, naming this operation Cape Breton Development Corporation (DEVCO). SYSCO purchased the coke ovens from DEVCO in 1973.

Dominion Tar and Chemical Company Ltd (Domtar) operated a coal tar refining plant and a coal tar storage facility in Sydney from 1903-1962. This facility was situated directly adjacent to and north of the coke oven operations. It diverted coal tar from the coke ovens, refined it, moved it through pipes, and stored it in tanks for shipping elsewhere. Domtar ceased operations in Sydney in 1962 abandoning its storage tanks, waste disposal lagoons, pipes, buildings and equipment. Domtar conducted little or no clean up of the site. A large tank, referred to as the "Domtar tank", remained in place adjacent to the coke ovens site into the 2000s, measuring 28 m (92 ft) in diameter and 6 m (20 ft) high. It contained materials abandoned by Domtar and other materials added in the years since the facility's abandonment.

By the mid-1970s, the environmental movement was gaining headway in North America, and concern about pollution from the steel mill and coke ovens was rising. In 1982, scientists from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans discovered polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a family of chemicals produced by incomplete combustion of organic material, in lobster caught in Sydney Harbour near Muggah Creek. They ordered the South Arm of the harbour closed to lobster fishing, and fingered the Tar Ponds as the likely source of contamination.

The discovery increased pressure to close the decrepit coke ovens, which finally ceased production in 1988. Underneath the coke ovens site were approximately one hundred and sixty one kilometres of underground pipes. These pipes were used to move chemicals throughout the coke ovens and steel plant site. Despite the fact that these pipes contained a mixture of dangerous, toxic and potentially explosive substances, many were never purged of their contents when the coke ovens operations ceased. SYSCO converted to an electric arc manufacturing process in 1990, and stopped production altogether in 2000. The mill is now dismantled.

In 1986, Canada and Nova Scotia signed a $34-million agreement to dredge the Tar Ponds and pump the sediments through a mile-long pipeline to a temporary incinerator and power plant. After many delays, the incinerator was completed, and passed required air emissions tests, in 1994. However, the pipeline system proved unable to handle the thick, lumpy Tar Ponds sludge, and the project was abandoned in 1995.

In 1996, the Nova Scotia government proposed a plan to bury the Tar Ponds under slag procured from the steel mill. By this time, the project had attracted local critics, who condemned the plan.

In 1999, the federal, provincial, and municipal governments jointly funded a community organization, the Joint Action Group (JAG), with a mandate to seek community consensus on cleanup options. The three governments also embarked on detailed environmental site assessments, and a variety of preliminary cleanup projects. Although JAG held more than 950 public meetings, no clear consensus on cleanup technologies emerged. Governments, meanwhile, generated more than 620 technical and scientific reports on the problem, and possible solutions.