Naval base gets cash to clean up toxic sites

The federal government will spend $214 million to clean some of the country's most heavily contaminated land, including a site at CFB Esquimalt, Environment Minister John Baird announced yesterday.

"This funding will help clean up more than 279 sites in communities right across the country, as well as help our government begin to assess the work on what needs to be done on 417 other sites," said Baird.

The contaminated sites include such areas as harbours, military bases, First Nations reserves, hospitals, mines, national parks, public-works maintenance facilities, RCMP detachments and airports polluted with oils, metals and other byproducts of use.

About $25 million will go to test additional sites to determine what is needed to clean them, said Baird. All the money is to be spent in the next year, he said.

Baird made the announcement in front of a large pit at CFB Esquimalt, which is being excavated and cleaned of oily wastewater left from the navy's bilge storage tanks in the 1940s. He said the issue of such contaminated sites is particularly timely because of damage to environment and homes after an oil pipeline was ruptured in Burnaby on Tuesday.

CFB Esquimalt will receive $4.56 million for, among other things, finishing work on the pit. The work has already cost more than $3 million and is expected to be done next year.

"It's a dog's breakfast of cancer-causing hydrocarbons," said Rob Griffiths, environment officer in charge of local military contaminated sites, as he gestured to the pit on the Colwood portion of the military base.

Dark pools of petroleum byproduct grow as the military removes dirty soil, he said. Crews are also breaking up a polluted rock bed and trying to clean it. But the pollution is so intense that much of the soil and rock cannot be remediated and must be disposed of at eco-waste facilities in Richmond and the Highlands, said Griffiths.

CFB Esquimalt is also removing polluted metals from an old shipbuilding site and remediating three historical fleet maintenance buildings as it merges them.

More than 11,000 federal sites are deemed to be contaminated, and that number doesn't include contaminated areas designated by the provinces. Vancouver Island is home to more than 1,000 of B.C.'s almost 4,000 federal contaminated sites.

The Capital Regional District has 346 sites, which includes such places as Victoria's Inner Harbour, soil near the Bay Street Armoury, Royal Roads University land, the Pacific Forestry Centre in Saanich and parts of Galiano, Mayne, Saturna and Saltspring islands.

Much of the historical pollution can be traced to the rapid industrialization of parts of Canada, where "consequences of progress were largely an afterthought" and left a legacy of contaminated sites "that were quite simply put down to arrogance, ignorance or negligence," said Baird.

Environmentalists welcome the cash but believe the government must better monitor current oil and gas pipeline projects to prevent future pollution, said Charles Campbell, of the Victoria-based Dogwood Initiative environmental non-profit group. "As environment minister, [Baird] needs to adopt a policy of do no more harm," he said.