Solution
After decades of study, the federal and Nova Scotia governments concluded that the best way to deal with the Sydney Tar Ponds is to stabilize, solidify, and contain the contaminated material. In January 2007, officials from Ottawa and the province announced a $400-million plan to solidify the toxic sludge using the Solidification / Stabilization (S/S) with Cement method. This technology was preferred over a controversial proposal to incinerate some of the 700,000 tonnes of sludge. Nordlys Environmental LP and ECC were awarded a $52-million contract in October 2009 to begin S/S operations.
Environmentalists and local residents continued to worry officials would incinerate some of the material, though Federal and provincial officials claimed the S/S method they had chosen would stabilize the 100-hectare site without producing any adverse health or environmental effects.
The first phase of the project was completed in mid-December 2009 and work will continue with Phase 2 in the spring of 2010. Eventually the area will be covered with an impermeable barrier, soil, and finally grass. Parts of the restored site may eventually be used for recreational purposes.
Read more about this topic: Sydney Tar Ponds
Famous quotes containing the word solution:
“Coming out, all the way out, is offered more and more as the political solution to our oppression. The argument goes that, if people could see just how many of us there are, some in very important places, the negative stereotype would vanish overnight. ...It is far more realistic to suppose that, if the tenth of the population that is gay became visible tomorrow, the panic of the majority of people would inspire repressive legislation of a sort that would shock even the pessimists among us.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“What is history? Its beginning is that of the centuries of systematic work devoted to the solution of the enigma of death, so that death itself may eventually be overcome. That is why people write symphonies, and why they discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“I can’t quite define my aversion to asking questions of strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up from railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who ... believe it to be the solution to most of this world’s problems.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)