NS: Cleanups good for health of Cape Breton economy

[SYDNEY, NS] — Cleanup projects, by definition, should remove hazards from the environment and leave citizens feeling safer. Ideally, they should also help the local economy.

Keith Brown, vice-president of development at Cape Breton University, said remediation projects are improving the environment and have already injected half a billion dollars into the Cape Breton economy and created hundreds of jobs.

A decade after the closure of the steel plant and coal mines, the region is still struggling, but it is making the difficult transition from a resource-based economy to one that is more diverse.

From left, Terry Smith, president of All-Tech Environmental Services, goes over work plans at the Sydney tar ponds cleanup site with air quality specialist Des Cousens and Cape Breton branch manager Darren Lawless. All-Tech has been in the environmental cleanup and monitoring business since 1993, and Smith expects the business to keep growing. — Tom Ayers, Cape Breton Post photo

“We’ve seen a forced, dramatic restructuring of the economy of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality,” said Brown, who is also a business professor and a former vice-president of the Cape Breton Development Corporation, the Crown agency originally established to shut down the coal mines. “Ten years later, the economy is more vibrant than many people said it would be when they looked 10 years into the future.”

But work still needs to be done, he said.

“The economy needs dramatically more diversification to support the people who live here.”

The end of heavy industry threw thousands of Cape Bretoners out of work and left many wondering what the future could possibly hold. While steady population decline continues to be a concern, the island hasn’t been abandoned completely.

The latest figures from the tar ponds agency show the design engineer portion of the cleanup alone has cost government about $30 million over two years, of which about 40 per cent was spent directly in Cape Breton.

As well, the figures show the contract has created 277 full-time jobs, of which 41 per cent were directly created in Cape Breton, with wages and salaries of about $5.5 million.

By the end of 2009, the agency said, a total of 38 contracts worth $211.4 million had been awarded. Nearly all of the contracts’ 22 service providers were located in Cape Breton and four were aboriginal.