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Cape Breton Post

Public learns about cooling pond project

Section: Business

By Erin Pottie,
The public was invited to meet the experts working to clean up the cooling pond, located in front of the Sydney Tar Ponds Agency office.

An open house was held at the Ashby Legion on State Street, Sydney and included demos of air monitoring, cooling pond description and project experts who helped answer questions about the project remediation.

The Sydney cooling pond is a manmade, circular body of water and sludge, located on Inglis Street. The function of the pond was to cool water once used by Sysco's rolling mills.

"We're starting the solidification in the next week or two, (we're) just doing some of the preliminary work," said Sydney Tar Ponds Agency CEO Frank Potter. "It involves taking water off the pond, treating the sludge in the pond, removing some of the structure (and) some creosote timbers that are all around the structure."

Members of Earth Tech, the agency's design team which has created water treatment recipes for the solidification process, were available Monday 3-7 p.m., along with representatives from All-Tech, which produces air quality detection.

The agency also included a demo of its webcam which rotates and has a 24-hour live feed of the cooling pond, which can be accessed from the website.

"It's good that the (agency) is giving the chance for the public to see what's going on over there on the property. Finally we're getting things going, we've been waiting since 1986, 21 years, finally they're starting to move stuff," said Dave Ervin, a concerned citizen and Atlantic Coastal Action Program-Cape Breton board member.

The project set to finish in March, will include water treatment and the eventual solidification and stabilization of the sludge.

Work on bridge was precautionary, says engineer

Section: Northside/Victoria

By Julie Collins,
Traffic across the bridge in this community was down to one lane, Monday, as workers installed blocking under the girders.

The Trans-Canada Highway bridge connects Boularderie Island at Bras d'Or and is on the main highway to metro Cape Breton and the ferry link to Newfoundland.

Department of Transportation bridge engineer Kim MacDonald said the work is precautionary.

"We installed blocking under the girders which are attached to the bearings which in turn are attached to the piers. It is a precautionary measure," she said. "We were underneath the bridge in October and it was then we identified the issue with the bearings."

A temporary bailey bridge is expected to be built in the spring in anticipation of replacement of the superstructure.

"We have an aging infrastructure that is in need in some of repair. This bridge has been identified as one that requires replacement."

According to department officials, the design work has been done by an engineering consultant. The department is looking at replacing the superstructure, everything from the railing, the girders and decks, as well as doing major repairs on the substructure - the piers and abutments.

The work under the bridge took the better part of Monday to complete.

"We monitor the ferry traffic patterns and try to schedule the work once the ferry traffic has passed."

The Department of Transportation normally rents a speciality under-bridge vehicle from Montreal when it isn't possible to set up traditional scaffolding. The vehicle has an articulating arm with a full platform that goes over the railing of the bridge and drops down. A completely enclosed cage allows the workers to access the platform.

MacDonald said the department plans to do other routine inspections while the vehicle is in the area.