If he could, Rene Ressler would dig up every buried remnant of the third Welland Canal in the name of historical preservation.

At Lock 25 in Thorold, however, he’d settle for shovelling in the name of environmental health.

Ressler, an avid canal explorer who runs The Welland Canals Advocate website, recently stumbled across a smelly, bright yellow substance spread across a filled-in section of what he believes to be the old approach to Lock 25 of the third canal.

“You smell this sulphur smell and you think, holy mackerel, God only knows what’s in here,” said Ressler, who hiked into the overgrown area between the current canal and Beaverdams Rd. with a group of canal enthusiasts.

Ressler isn’t sure what the smelly yellow material is, but he’s guessing it was dumped in the old lock approach decades ago.

The canal history buff has also consulted old photos to get a sense of the typical width and depth of a lock approach for the abandoned industrial waterway.

“This was once a pretty big cavity,” he said, standing atop the brush-covered fill.

The fill doesn’t quite cover the old stone walls and crumbling ship bollards nearby.

“They would have needed a lot of something to fill in this space. I hope it wasn’t all this (smelly material.)”

After an inquiry from The Standard, the provincial Ministry of Environment sent a staff member to investigate the site, said district manager Rich Vickers.

Vickers said his staff took a sample of what appears to be “some sort of industrial byproduct,” but added the material was found on federal land managed by the St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corp., and so outside the provincial ministry’s jurisdiction.

As a result, the MOE has asked the Seaway to investigate the matter, he said.

A Seaway official said late Wednesday the substance could be sulphur, but the corporation would take its own samples before determining what to do next.

Dumping of industrial waste into abandoned canals was fairly common half a century ago.

Vickers said in Niagara, “it’s not unusual to uncover evidence of past industrial activities” dating back several decades.

Sometimes, the historic contamination stemmed from deliberate dumping. that released wastewater gradually led to a buildup of environmental contaminants in local creeks and waterways.

Georgia-Pacific is currently involved in one of the biggest toxic cleanups in Thorold’s history, about a half-kilometre from the old Lock 25.

The paper-making company is scraping close to 9,000 cubic metres of sediment contaminated with PCBs out of Beaverdams Creek. The pollution

back to the 1960s, when the plant recycled carbonless copy paper that contained the once-popular chemical compounds, which were eventually banned.

If the old canal approach is stuffed with industrial waste, Ressler is hoping the Seaway will dig it out.

He admits to cheering for that outcome as a history buff, too.

“This is our history, our heritage,” he said, pointing to the bits of lock wall peeking out of the ground.

“I’d love to see the whole thing excavated, for everyone to see and enjoy.”

via Canal buff’s discovery could be decades-old dumpsite – St. Catharines Standard – Ontario, CA.