PORT HOPE, ONT.—Three contracts have been awarded under the Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI) in order to safely manage the “historic low-level radioactive waste in the municipalities of Port Hope and Clarington,” states the federal government.
A contract worth more than $86.8 million was awarded to AMEC — CB&I Joint Venture to build the Port Granby Long-Term Waste Management Facility in the Municipality of Clarington, Ont.
The project will relocate the low-level radioactive waste and contaminated soils from an existing waste management facility on the shoreline of Lake Ontario to a new facility about a kilometre north of the current site, a release explains.
The contract includes the construction and waste excavation as well as the construction of a roadway in order to allow transportation of the excavated material without using municipal roads. Restoration of the existing and new facility sites is also included.
Two other contracts were also awarded as part of this initiative for radiological surveys of properties and road allowances. One is for more than $7.2 million and was awarded to ARCADIS Canada Inc. to complete the radiological survey of approximately 800 mainly residential properties to determine which will require remediation.
A second contract for around $1.5 million was awarded to Amec Foster Wheeler to carry out investigations on road allowances for determining the presence of low-level radioactive waste.
In all, the idea behind the PHAI is to clean up the radioactive waste and contaminated soil and safely transport it to two new, engineered above-ground facilities to be built in Port Hope and Clarington.
The historic waste resulted from radium and uranium processing in Port Hope between 1933 and 1988 by the former Crown corporation Eldorado Nuclear Limited and its private sector predecessors, a release reads.
"I, along with other residents of Clarington, welcome this new contract as an important step by the Government of Canada to restore contaminated lands and return them to a naturalized landscape," said Durham MP Erin O’Toole in a statement.
The minister of natural resources in January 2012 announced that the federal government would invest $1.28 billion over 10 years for the implementation phase of the PHAI.
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