November 9, 2007

For Immediate Release

BAIRD, SWEET AND WALLACE DELIVER ACTION FROM THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA TO CLEANUP HAMILTION HARBOUR

The Honourable John Baird, Minister of the Environment, David Sweet, Member of Parliament for Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale and Mike Wallace, Member of Parliament for Burlington, announced today that the Government of Canada is investing $30 million to clean-up sediment in Randle Reef in the Hamilton Harbour Area of Concern in the Great Lakes.

“Delivering action to cleaning up the Great Lakes and our Canadian waters is important for this government,” said Minister Baird. “We know that Randle Reef is a priority and that is why our government is putting its funding on the table and immediately to ensure that the Hamilton lakefront returns to productive economic and recreational use for the benefit of us and our children.”

Hamilton Harbour is the largest and most severely contaminated Canadian site within the Great Lakes. It is expected that the Province of Ontario, along with municipal and local partners will each contribute one third of remaining costs.

“This is a great day for Hamilton Harbour and the environment in this area,” said Mr. Sweet. “So many have worked so hard and I’m pleased that our Government has recognized the calls that MP Wallace and I have made to address Randle Reef.”

The project involves the construction of a 9.5 hectare containment facility (made of double-lined steel walls with a clay bottom), which will be built around the area with the heaviest contamination and be used to store the less contaminated sediment dredged from the surrounding area. Once dredging is complete , the facility will be capped with clean fill and two-thirds of the area will become a shipping pier and the rest a naturalized shoreline. The containment facility is expected to have a 200-year lifespan.

There is nothing more vital to our communities and our people than clean, healthy water. It is what Canadians demand and my constituents deserve,” said Mr. Wallace. “The people of Hamilton deserve to have their waterfront returned to them and today we are taking a major step towards restoring the full economic and recreational potential of this harbor.”

This major investment to clean up Hamilton Harbour is part of the Government of Canada’s Action Plan for Clean Water. Recently, the Government has also taken action to protect water quality including tough new regulations against the dumping of raw sewage and improving raw sewage treatment in municipalities and first nation communities across Canada. These measures will help filter out substances like phosphates, which can lead to excessive blue-green algae production.

Backgrounders on the Hamilton Harbour clean-up project and the overall Great Lakes clean-up initiative are available at www.ec.gc.ca

For further information:

Mike Wallace, MP

Burlington

905-639-5757

Backgrounder of Randle Reef

Cleaning Up Randle Reef In Hamilton Harbour-Part of the Government of Canada’s Action Plan for Clean Water

With an investment of $30 million, our Government is taking real action to clean up one of the largest and most severely contaminated site within the Canadian side of the Great Lakes-Hamilton Harbour. Through this commitment, our Government is addressing the principal environmental challenge facing the Harbour, the remediation of the contaminated sediment in Randle Reef.

Randle Reef is an underwater deposit of 630,000 cubic metres of heavily contaminiated coal tar (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) that was deposited there over a long period of time, from industrial operations that have since closed operations. In Canada, it is second only to the Sydney Tar Ponds as a site contaminated by coal tar. The eight-year clean-up is expected to begin in 2008 and be completed by 2016.

In 2007, a research study by York University revealed that the net benefits (environmental, social, and economic) of cleaning up Randle Reef are estimated at $126 million over 25 years. This project would further advance the economic competitiveness of the region through expanded port facilities and shoreline redevelopment.

The chosen method for addressing contaminated sediment in Randle Reef was developed in consultation with stakeholders, including the Hamilton Port Authority, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, the City of Hamilton, the Hamilton Region Conservation Authority, the Bay Area Restoration Council, Hamilton Steel (formerly Stelco) and the public. This approach of confined disposal and beneficial use is standard. It has been used in the Netherlands and is being proposed in many European cases on a much larger scale.

Hamilton Harbour is a 2,150-hectare embayment located at the western tip of Lake Ontario and connected to the lake by a ship canal across the sandbar that forms the bay. Several urban centres are located in the watershed and include the cities of Hamilton, Ancaster, Dundas, Flamborough, Stoney Creek, Burlington, portions of Halton Region and the Township of Puslinch.

Areas of concern are severely degraded geographic areas within the Great Lakes Basin. Restoring environmental quality is a priority due to their impact on local and basin-wide ecosystem health. The Government of Canada and Ontario recently announced the 2007 Canada-Ontario Agreement Respecting the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem. The Agreement focuses on cleaning up the remaining 15 Canadian Areas of Concern in the Great Lakes. The Randle Reef clean up is part of the Government of Canada’s Action Plan for Clean Water and its goal of ensuring that all Canadians have access to clean, safe, and healthy water.