Official Sydney and Area Projects Thread

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http://www.capebretonpost.com/index.cfm?sid=277282&sc=145

Federal Minister of Industry Tony Clement, right, is shown walking along George Street in Sydney with his chief of staff Bill King following a Wednesday breakfast meeting at the Delta Sydney. Greg McNeil - Cape Breton Post

Clement asked to help fix ferry problems

GREG MCNEIL
The Cape Breton Post

SYDNEY — Traffic congestion at the Marine Atlantic terminal in North Sydney quickly became an issue during the federal minister of industry’s breakfast meeting with local business people.

Tony Clement spoke on a broad range of issues during Wednesday’s session, but problems at the ferry terminal came to the forefront when the president of the longshoremen’s association approached the minister before a scrum with the local media.

“The people are getting frustrated,” said Peter Gillis, president of local 1259 of the Atlantic Coast District International Longshoremen’s Association.

“It is to the point where customers are coming there and not even allowed on the property because there is not room to put two, three boatloads of traffic at the same time on the lot.”

In recent weeks, access to Highway 105 entering North Sydney has been restricted due to traffic waiting to enter Marine Atlantic’s terminal in North Sydney.

When Gillis asked him about solutions for the terminal, Clement said the government is listening all the time.

“Certainly, part of my trip here is to hear from Cape Bretoners, from people in the Sydney area, of what their challenges are and how the federal government can be helpful.”

Gillis said terminal upgrades could help Cape Breton take advantage of a booming Newfoundland economy.

“As an employee over there, as well as a union representative, I feel we have to get some of this money brought down into this region and have some the infrastructure changed over there.”

Gillis hopes the concerns will be addressed and not forgotten.

“I hope that he didn’t just put this information on a piece of paper and is going to go lose it on his desk.”

http://www.capebretonpost.com/index.cfm?sid=277276&sc=152

Residents upset proposed meeting on tar ponds cancelled

ERIN POTTIE
The Cape Breton Post

SYDNEY — Residents of Sydney who wanted to learn more about the tar ponds remediation project are upset that a proposed meeting was cancelled.

Wayne McKay of Ashby said he arranged a public meeting after hearing concerns while on the campaign trail as an NDP candidate during the last provincial election.

Specifically, he said residents worried about a letter sent to the Cape Breton Regional Municipality last year that requests a delay in a playground project being developed on Intercolonial Street, to be known as the Wintering Cove Neighbourhood Park.

A line in the letter states, “This current land use does not create a concern with respect to exposure to air contaminants.”

Additional studies would be required to demonstrate whether or not there are risks to users of the park. Those studies, the letter reads, would result in additional cost and delay for the project.

McKay said a meeting was scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday at the McConnell Memorial Library in Sydney to discuss air quality and other concerns.

On Tuesday at about 3 p.m. McKay called Gary Campbell of provincial Crown corporation, Nova Scotia Lands, which is remediating the former steel plant property, to remind him of the meeting.

Campbell returned the phone call at 4:30 and told McKay’s wife he would not be in attendance.

“This lack of showing up at the last second just really, really angered me,” said McKay. “I had been doing everything I could to accommodate both sides to try and come to some kind of resolution here.

“If you talk to the residents, they’ll tell you that they don’t believe anything that anyone from the tar ponds agency says to them. They’ve completely lost faith in the agency and it’s because of things like this happening over and over and over again.”

Campbell said Wednesday that the meeting date was a misunderstanding. He said McKay was asked to gather questions from the residents and that he received a copy of those questions about two weeks ago.

“I never expected we were going to be dealing with six pages of questions, many of which are certainly outside my mandate to deal with and I told him in my e-mail I was in the midst of preparing for two board meetings, both Nova Scotia Lands and SYSCO, and I had hoped to get a week off for vacation the week after,” said Campbell.

Campbell said he told McKay he wasn’t able to answer those questions within the scheduled time frame. He said he assumed there would be no meeting, but said he never used the word cancelled until Tuesday.

Tanya Collier MacDonald, spokesperson with the Sydney Tar Ponds Agency, said a meeting was already held for those residents at the McConnell Library in June.

She said the agency is currently in the process of answering the submitted questions.