Randle Reef

[ScreamingViking]

This is great news. Still a couple of years out from full completion but coming along steadily.


Dredging of contaminants at Randle Reef in Hamilton Harbour is complete

https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilto...-dredging.html

Teviah Moro
The Hamilton Spectator
Fri., June 18, 2021



The last of the contaminated sediments have been dredged from Randle Reef and deposited in a massive steel box as part of a years-long effort to clean up Hamilton Harbour.

“It’s certainly something that we’re quite thrilled about,” Mark Bainbridge, the city’s director of water and wastewater planning and capital, said Friday.

That stage of the $138.9-million project was completed in March, Bainbridge said, noting some less serious remaining contaminants still have to be capped with sand.

But the “vast, vast majority” of the material befouled by more than a 100 years of heavy industry has been placed in the 15-acre steel isolation container built in the southwest corner of the harbour, Bainbridge noted.

The so-called reef is roughly 148 acres and contained an estimated 695,000 cubic metres of sediment polluted with toxic chemicals has been the most befouled site on the Canadian Great Lakes.

The effort to build the steel box is a project jointly funded by the federal, provincial and area municipal governments, as well as Stelco was inked in 2015. Hamilton’s share is $14 million.

Bainbridge expects the “sand-capping” of remaining contaminated sediment — in a channel by the steelmaker that dredging equipment couldn’t reach — to be finished in August.

The next stage of the remediation project will involve placing an “environmental cover” on the containment box, built with about $10 million in Stelco steel, is expected to start early next year, the federal government says.

Dealing with Randle Reef is considered a major step toward delisting Hamilton Harbour as an “area of concern,” a status it was given in 1985 under the Canada-United States Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

The project is expected to be finished in late 2023, Bainbridge noted in a recent update for city council.

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