By Randy Boswell, Ottawa Citizen, December 28, 2016
The high cost of cleaning up the contaminated Chaudière Islands before the $1.2-billion Zibi property development can proceed is a story almost 200 years in the making.
Windmill Development and its partners are seeking some $60 million in public funds to rehabilitate these historic brownfields just upstream from Parliament Hill. To make matters more complicated, it’s all part of a swath of downtown Ottawa freshly re-claimed by Quebec-based Algonquin people.
“This site has been industrial for up to 200 years, so there is a real range of contaminants present,” Windmill executive Jeff Westeinde told the Citizen recently.
http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/boswell-the-pollution-scourge-of-1866-was-sawdust