EA NOT THE BE ALL AND END ALL

Don't stand down just yet.

The announcment by the outgoing Liberal government of a demand for an Environmental Assessment (EA) is a small battle won in a long war.

There are still alot of what ifs surrounding it.

And here is a little problem Lindsay found with an EA they did.
"The Ministry of the Environment (MOE) has ordered that construction be stopped on a forcemain going under the Scugog River in Lindsay, and has called for a public meeting after Ministry testing has shown elevated levels of PCBs at the site.

In a letter to the Ministry earlier this month, the City asked if the pipe could be moved without having to revise the original EA. The Ministry denied that request

The original plan was to cross the river following an existing easement, but it was later discovered that meant going into a "significant wetland." That discovery meant the pipe had to move.

But, the next hurdle was buried garbage in the location. "The Ministry doesn't want us drilling through buried garbage," Mr. Seaton said, adding that garbage will be collected and relocated.

Wow a wetland AND a garbage dump and the EA didn’t know about that before construction was started?

And here comes the hindsight: "In my opinion, the initial EA investigation was inadequate," he said. "It should have identified the problems of going through the landfill and the potential impacts of disturbing PCB-laden silt. On a project this size, there should have been much more information. If council had known about the potential problems, they may not have gone with the current design plan. We may have looked at another way of going under the river.
http://www.mykawartha.com/news/article/1074406--moe-halts-part-of-northwest-trunk-sewer-construction