INDEPTH: TAR PONDS
Tracking the tar ponds
CBC News Online | May 6, 2004
Towering cliffs, golden beaches, thundering waterfalls – they're only a small part of the beauty that makes up one of Canada's most cherished locations – Cape Breton. And in the heart of that beauty lies the small industrial city of Sydney.
The region had been a rich source for coal mining since the 1700s. But it wasn't until the end of the 19th century that Sydney, and much of the area around it, was thrust into the industrial age.
The consolidation of several coal mines in nearby Glace Bay and New Waterford and the construction of a steel plant near Muggah Creek spelled prosperity for the area and gradually the people there grew to depend on steel, coal, and fishing for their livelihood.
At the centre of that prosperity was the Sydney Steel Co., or Sysco as it is known. For almost a century, the smoke that belched from its tall stacks spelled jobs for residents of the city. Few of them could have known that it also spelled serious health problems and environmental disaster.
What prosperity had existed, soon faded. The three industries that supported Sydney, and most of Cape Breton, began to collapse. In 1967, the Nova Scotia government bought the Sydney Steel Co. after its previous owner shut it down. For the next few decades it limped along supported by government handouts.
Little money was spent to reduce the large volumes of water and air pollution that the plant's old furnaces and coke-ovens produced. It was this pollution that eventually created the area's infamous tar ponds.
At the heart of the tar ponds disaster was the coke-oven. A coke-oven is a large chamber where coal is heated. At a certain temperature undesired tar and gases are separated off from the desired coke.
These toxic wastes, which included benzene, kerosene, and naphthalene, were being poured off into a nearby brook and slowly collecting into an estuary that flows into Sydney Harbour; this area is known as Muggah Creek.
More than 80 years of this type of coke-oven operation left the ground water and surface water in the area seriously contaminated with arsenic, lead and other toxins. It also led to the accumulation of some 700,000 tonnes of chemical waste and raw sewage, 40,000 tonnes of which are PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls).
The locals have come to refer to the area – the size of three city blocks – as the Tar Ponds.
Effects of the Tar Ponds
Toxic sludge on cellar wall
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Many of the side effects caused by the tar ponds are still unknown. Residents of Sydney have reported an orange goo seeping into their cellars and basements.
Others have said that when it rains, puddles in the area turn fluorescent green. Those who live near the ponds, especially those in Whitney Pier, adjacent to the site, have complained of massive headaches, nosebleeds, and serious breathing problems.
It's also believed that the wastes which make up the tar ponds contain 15 varieties of cancer related chemicals. Today, Sydney has one of the highest rates of cancer, birth defects, and miscarriages in Canada.
The effects on animal and plant life in the area have also been severe. In 1980 chemical byproducts from the coke-oven process were discovered in lobsters.
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