Hamilton’s Randle Reef Project Wins Brownfield Remediation Award – Hamilton | The Canadian News

The Randle Reef project has received a 2021 Brownie Award.

The $ 139 million project has been recognized for its excellence in remediation and remodeling, during an annual ceremony held by the Canadian Network of Brownfields (CBN), a non-profit environmental organization.

“The award was received earlier this week by our provincial partners,” Craig Murdoch, Hamilton’s Acting General Manager of Public Works, revealed during a capital budget meeting of Hamilton City Councilors on Friday morning. “This is for a significant improvement in the quality of the water or the environment.”

The Randle Reef project involves the dredging, containment and plugging of 695,000 cubic meters of contaminated sediment within the Port of Hamilton.

The CBN honors him as a “successful partnership” to bring economic and ecological regeneration to cleanliness.

The provincial and federal governments, the cities of Hamilton and Burlington, the Halton region, the Hamilton Oshawa Port Authority, and Stelco have contributed to the $ 138.9 million cost of remediation of the 60-hectare site, which was created through from a legacy of industrial processes dating back to the 19th century.

The Port of Hamilton was identified as an Area of ​​Concern under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between Canada and the United States in 1985, due to significant deterioration in water quality and loss of fish and wildlife habitat. .

Ward 5 Coun. Russ Powers, who represented Dundas on the council and served as a Liberal MP when the project was first conceived in the early 2000s, says that “this will go a long way toward minimizing our recognition as a hot spot or, finally, remove it from that international list. “

Stage 1 of the Randle Reef project, which involved the construction of an engineered containment facility (ECF) known as the “steel box,” was completed in 2017.

Stage 2, which began in 2018 and was completed in March 2021, involved dredging the contaminated sediment into the 6.2-hectare box.

Stage 3, which involves limiting the ECF, will begin in the spring of 2022.