Coal tar is seeping into the Otonabee River, causing provincial and federal agencies to ask the city to deal with contamination underneath the Simcoe St. courthouse and neighbouring properties, a city report shows.

City council, sitting as committee of the whole Monday, will consider pulling $500,000 from a reserve fund to study the coal tar contamination and develop and action plan for remediation.

The cost to deal with the contamination could be much higher.

An environmental consulting firm that the city hired to study the situation in 2007 estimated it would cost between $1 million and $2 million for remediation and risk management at the courthouse property.

A cost estimate won’t be known until the remediation plan is done, city environmental protection division manager Patrick Devlin states.

“Cleanups of this nature are typically expensive and can easily cost in the millions of dollars,” he states. “This situation has the potential to control budget discussions for some time.”

Jagger Sims Ltd. didn’t provide an estimate for the cleanup of the nearby Millennium Park property.

Extra measures would have to be taken since the park property is next to the Otonabee River, Jagger Sims stated in a report.

City officials said at the time that the study found the situation was stable and it didn’t require any action.

That view changed in November last year when Parks Canada lowered the water level of the Otonabee River to repair Lock 19.

“Following the dropping of the river level, seepage of materials was observed from the western bank of the Otonabee River, near the storm sewer outfall located at the end of Simcoe St.,” Devlin states. “The seepage … covered river rocks and the water surface.”

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The source of the contamination is assumed to be the city-owned site of the former Peterborough Gas Works facility at 70, 72 and 80 Simcoe St., Devlin states.

“For some time, there had been concern regarding the potential for coal tar-related seepage from the properties,” he states. “With the river at full height, however, it was difficult to verify that the coal tar impacts had reached the river.”

Devlin states that provincial and federal regulatory agencies approached the city in the spring to develop an action plan to deal with the ongoing environmental issues on the site.

A coal gasification plant operated at the site for almost 80 years from the mid-1880s to the mid-1950s.

The city bought the court building property from a local developer, AON Inc., for $2.6 million in November 2001 to deal with a lawsuit the company had filed against the city in 1999.

In its more-than-$10-million lawsuit, AON alleged the coal tar contaminants buried on city property from a defunct gas works operation leached into the court house site.

AON bought the courthouse site from the city in 1982 for $413,752. The city had bought the property from the province and Ontario Hydro, which operated on the site from 1916 to 1929.

In 2007, Jagger Hims found groundwater and soil contamination on the properties exceed Ministry of the Environment guidelines. But it also found the coal tar contamination was stable, with no apparent movement towards the surface or spread to neighbouring properties since studies were done in the 1980s and 1990s.

Simcoe St. immediately south of the courthouse and the northern portion of Millennium Park are the most heavily contaminated areas, Jagger Hims states.

“Based on the southeasterly direction of groundwater flow in the study area, it is inferred that ground water impacted by the various coal tar related parameters is ultimately reaching the Otonabee River and impacting on the water quality,” the consultants state.

“Previous studies have attempted to measure the impact of the coal tar contamination on aquatic creatures in the river and to measure the potential impact on humans using water from the Otonabee River for swimming, fishing, etc. However, these studies have not identified a clear link to significant impacts on human health or the aquatic ecosystem.”

via Coal tar study would cost $500,000 – Peterborough Examiner – Ontario, CA.