Local stakeholders are invited to an open house on a proposed soils recycling facility in the port lands.
The community consultation is set for Thursday, March 11 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the South Riverdale Community Health Centre, 955 Queen St. E.All are welcome to attend.Members of the project team will be on hand to answer questions and provide information.Waterfront Toronto, which is hosting the gathering, will provide attendees details about a pilot test in the port lands that will direct its long-term soils recycling strategy.The waterfront development agency recently submitted an application to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment requesting a certificate of approval under Section 27 of the Environmental protection Act to store, transfer and process soils for the next 20 or so years at a 20-acre site at 294, 320, and 348 Unwin Ave.Before making any long-term decisions, Waterfront Toronto's first step will be to conduct a pilot test to evaluate the technical as well as economic performance of soil treatment technologies that could be used in the new facility. The pilot phase of the project, planned for 2010-2011, would be to construct a smaller scale facility to process 50,000 tonnes of impacted soil using technologies already successfully in use in Europe and the United States.Waterfront Toronto will evaluate the effectiveness and cost to operate such a facility as well as the noise and dust it generates.From there, a larger facility will be considered. Waterfront Toronto's president and CEO John Campbell said last fall the goal of the project would be to treat and reuse soil for future developments along the city's 1977-acre waterfront.Campbell admitted the project may not be the most cost effective in the city's current construction market, but said it furthers the organization's sustainability objectives.More than 100 years of heavy industrialization along the waterfront has left developers with scores of contaminated sites to contend with. Campbell said while a small percentage of soils are so contaminated they must be moved off site; up to 95 per cent can be treated on-site and reused. Waterfront Toronto estimates more than 2,000,000 cubic metres of impacted soils need to be treated along the waterfront.For more details, visit www.waterfrontoronto.ca or contact Andrea Kelemen at akelemen@waterfrontoronto.ca or 416-214-1344 ext. 248.