A final piece of sheet pile is lifted by a crane from the mouth of the engineered channel, which had separated Muggah Creek from Sydney harbour. With its removal, water is flowing from the channel into the harbour for the first time in a decade. Chris...
SYDNEY ? The federal and provincial governments will be spending $17 million to transform a remediated Sydney tar ponds and coke ovens site into several outdoor recreational spaces to attract people of all ages.
A new park, sports field, outdoor concert stage, pedestrian bridges, and trails will be some of the new features on the 97 hectares of former industrial land.
An official announcement of the project was made by federal Labour Minister Lisa Raitt at the site next to the Ferry Street bridge Sunday.
?What used to be a really smelly and ugly Muggah Creek is now a beautiful channel coming in from Sydney harbour with gorgeous rock beds on either side,? said Raitt, who was speaking on behalf of federal Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose.
Work to fill in the north tar pond, which began in April, is expected to be finished by the end of the year.
The contractors awarded the bid to build the park and green spaces are Municipal Ready Mix Ltd. of Sydney, and Denko Mi?kmaq Enterprises Ltd. of Eskasoni.
Construction on the final land-use projects began this month and is scheduled for completion in August 2013.
The tar ponds community liaison committee, chaired by Alastair MacLeod, has been meeting monthly to advise the agency how the cleanup has impacted the community.
MacLeod said he sees the final product increasing the quality of life of residents who have lived around the tar ponds for years.
He said the Sydney Tar Ponds Agency has had to listen to 15 community groups as each gave its interpretation of what the remediated site should look like.
MacLeod said the agency also listened to the community liaison committee when it came to resolving disputes with the cleanup project.
?When the Battery Point barrier was built, north end residents said, ?Hey, wait a minute. We just had the sewer terminal built and we hurt badly from contractor?s trucks running through the streets at all hours, causing damage. We don?t want this anymore.?
?So the agency listened to this. They met with the local people, met with the contractors and arranged a schedule so that local people would not be hurt.?
At the point where Muggah Creek meets Sydney harbour, crews lifted a piece of sheet pile by a crane from the mouth of the engineered channel, which had separated the creek from the harbour.
With its symbolic removal, crews will work this week to excavate the banks on both sides of the channel to allow for free-flowing water from the channel into the harbour for the first time in a decade.
The cleanup project remains on schedule and within its $400-million budget, cost-shared between the federal and provincial governments, said Kevin MacDonald, president of the Sydney Tar Ponds Agency.
?We?re eight months ahead of schedule and we have a very health contingency remaining so we?re running under budget,? he said.
?With Municipal Ready Mix, right now you can see a trench along Ferry Street where they?re installing a storm sewer for the commons area, and so on, and they?ll be working well into the winter and starting back up in the spring.?
The project, which is expected to be fully complete by March 2014, has delivered 48 contracts valued at $292 million to 25 businesses and generated approximately 1,134 full-time equivalent jobs since work first started in April of 2004.
There are currently about 100 employees working on the site.
There were 23 service providers under contract, all located in Cape Breton, and five were from the island?s First Nations communities.
Aboriginal businesses were successful in winning bids for remediation and construction contracts worth more than $70 million.
It?s due to this success that the provincial and federal governments will use the aboriginal set-aside model for other large-scale projects such as the national shipbuilding procurement strategy, Raitt said.
It?s expected the site will be turned over to the provincial government sometime in 2014.
Deputy premier Frank Corbett said it?s unclear how much money it would take to maintain the newly created parkland on an annual basis.
Corbett said he would be looking at the Cape Breton Regional Municipality to contribute in some way to maintaining the park land, but he wouldn?t delve into specifics.
?If we?re giving them recreational facilities to have, (CBRM) should do a fair share of the (cost).?
An artist?s rendering of the future park space is available on the Sydney Tar Ponds Agency website at www.tarpondscleanup.ca.
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cshannon@cbpost.com
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