There’s activity on the former Bakelite property, but the presence of construction vehicles and moving of soil on the Dundas Street West lands is legal this time.

Quinte Conservation has begun restoration work at the contaminated site. The property owner, Jim Sinclair, has hired a contractor to carry out work on the site, as ordered by a judge after convictions for a slew of environmental infractions there.

Quinte Conservation is supervising the work and Sinclair is footing the bill.
The intent of the remedial work is to return the land to its previous condition before Sinclair reconfigured the shoreline to bleed off soil contaminants from the old industrial uses there.

That shoreline work brought numerous environmental charges that earned Sinclair four months in jail and $690,000 in fines.

Terry Murphy, general manager of Quinte Conservation, said he expects contractors to be on site for three to four weeks to complete the necessary work. He said the construction crews have a number of projects that need to be completed.

“There was a roadway that was built out of rock from one point to another point. It was about 500 metres in length and he ended up blocking off a part of the bay. In behind that bay, that was separated from the rest of the Bay of Quinte, contaminated sediments had built up. Right now they’re removing that sediment,” Murphy said Thursday afternoon.

Once the sediments and silt are removed, the entire roadway itself will be removed. When those projects are completed, the natural drainage of the land must be restored, he added.

“Then, when that’s done, they have to remove a whole bunch of fill from the flood plain,” he said. “They’ve created a storage area on site and all the materials will be placed in that storage area.”

Murphy said the contractor hired by Sinclair has been cooperative and can only perform work on the site when a Quinte Conservation official is there to monitor the progress.

Sinclair’s property, which he purchased in 2003, is highly contaminated from years of industrial use. When the Bakelite plant was operating, thousands of 45-gallon drums filled with oils, PCBs, sludge and solvents were stored and even buried on site.

While more than 500 drums of chemical waste were removed in the 1990s from the plant voluntarily, the level of contamination on the property is still not fully known.