On June 16, representatives from the CCRA, WRCA and PUVHA met briefly with Bernard Moore of Candec Consultants Limited. Candec are the new engineering firm overseeing the remediation and demolition on the Manson Site. Candec specializes in environmental and geotechnical engineering projects.
Yellow Moon Homes have taken over the site from Penfund and have brought in a new team of players, headed by Candec, to do the work. They will be using the plans for the remediation and demolition that were reviewed and approved by the Ministry of the Environment and then fine-tuned by the City's Peer Reviewer last year. These are the plans that were presented to the community at a Public Meeting on October 13, 1999 at the PUCC.
However, Mr. Moore has made mention of some changes, all, we feel, for the better.
The air-monitoring will now be looked after by ORTECH, who handled the air-monitoring on the Manville site, now being developed by Brookfield Homes, some years ago. The Ministry of the Environment will have their air-monitoring personnel on site while the asbestos is being removed.
The transite panels on the building will be removed by unbolting them individually , and lowered onto skids. This is good news as the building slabs, which contain a percentage of asbestos fibre, will no longer be allowed to drop from a height, as Mr. Moore feels that increases the risk of releasing asbestos fibres when the slabs hit the ground and fragment.
The Ministry of Labour has stipulated the entire site must be fenced, to a minimum height of six feet on the south side of the site, and eight feet on the other three sides.
The building will be demolished after the soil has been remediated. Candec feels it is better to clean up the exterior asbestos first, thus removing the greatest potential source of airborne asbestos. Candec also says that, during the exterior cleanup, they can better control the dust generated by the various vehicles on site, as they can limit the vehicles to specific paths at that time. This cannot be done so easily during the building demolition. They also feel that cleaning up the soil with the building still in place is of some advantage as the building will act as a windbreak, helping to reduce the potential for dust to be blown around.
There will be 24 hour security on site.
I asked Mr. Moore about my pet peeve- the "triggers" in the Emergency Response plan being "dust emissions seen leaving the site". He assures me that they will be working to a standard of "no dust emissions on site", which was the standard laid down, for obvious reasons, by the Environmental Assessment Board for the Manville site.
The contaminated soil and asbestos cement fragments will be transported, after being bagged and sealed then placed in trucks that will be tarped, by Canadian Waste, possibly to their disposal site in Sarnia.
Mr. Moore appeared very open to the idea of another Public Meeting for the community to introduce the new players and to explain the anticipated process. Plans are afoot for an information display in the PU library and the City is in the process of getting a newsletter out to the community.
Assuming Mr. Moore's follow-through and follow-up are as good as the first impressions he made, I feel this can only be a change for the better.
