COVER STORY
Bermingham Foundation Solutions helps clean up Randle Reef
By Deb Smith
For more than 150 years, Hamilton Harbour, the largest
harbour on the western side of Lake Ontario, has
played an important role in the course of Canadian history.
Heavy industry, including textile factories, meatpacking
centres and steel mills, flourished along its shoreline
long before the concept of environmental protection.
As a result, Hamilton Harbour now contains the largest
toxic sediment site on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes.
Randle Reef, located in the harbour’s southwest corner, carries
an estimated 675,000 cubic metres of sediment loaded
with over 100 years’ worth of deadly chemicals from industry
and local wastewater plants run-off. In the later 1980s, when
Canada and the U.S. identified 43 Areas of Concern (AOC)
in the Great Lakes, Hamilton Harbour was at the top of the
Canadian list.
In response, a coalition of governments, corporations
and local organizations moved forward with the Hamilton
Harbour Remedial Action Plan (HHRAP). Today, seven funding
partners have committed $138.9 million to the Randle
Reef Sediment Remediation project: Environment Canada,
Ontario Ministry of Environment, City of Hamilton, Hamilton
Port Authority, City of Burlington, Regional Municipality of
Halton and Stelco (US Steel).
Riggs Engineering Ltd. developed and designed the solution:
an engineered containment facility (ECF) placed over
the densest area of contamination. Covering 6.2 hectares
(equal to nine football fields), the ECF consists of double steel
sheet pile walls driven into the harbour floor. Any remaining
contaminants would be dredged and placed inside, the entire
structure then permanently capped to isolate the toxins from
the harbour ecosystem.
“While we were driving the
sheet piles, we also had
to consider disturbing the
contaminated lakebed as
little as possible.”
– Jeff Thomson, Bermingham
Foundation Solutions
PHOTOS COURTESY OF BERMINGHAM FOUNDATION SOLUTIONS
PILING CANADA 13