If you’ve been to other waterfront communities in Canada and around the world, the St. Mary’s River shoreline in Sault Ste. Marie may disappoint.
Despite featuring an endless supply of natural beauty, the city has consistently struggled to establish anchors that can attract a mix of locals and tourists to revitalize its fading downtown area.
This fact doesn’t diminish the range of existing gems along the shoreline, including Bellevue Park, the Hub Trail, and Whitefish Island, to name just a few.
Nonetheless, significant gaps remain in local waterfront development, and it means that the city’s development ambition lags far behind its actual potential.
The site that’s historically courted the most attention and controversy is known as ‘the Gateway.’ Over the years, it’s attracted a cartoonish amount of business proposals that have all disintegrated before shovels could be found.
The north section of the Gateway is considered a relatively successful redevelopment project, now featuring a casino and parking lot on polluted land that’s costly to remediate and laden with risk.
The south section still languishes.
In previous decades, the roughly 14 acre site featured several industrial activities on site and in proximity. Although most of those industries have disappeared over time, their footprints remain in the ground.
In lieu of a grand vision for redevelopment coming together, the south section has hosted the Mill Market since 2014 (in what was once a municipal fish hatchery building), a popular destination for people from around the Algoma Region.
Besides the quaint farmers market, a parking lot, and a trail along the water’s edge, the entire eastern section of the site is noticeably barren.
Most of those perusing artisanal crafts and organic vegetables are probably blissfully unaware that they’re situated atop what’s euphemistically referred to as a ‘brownfield.’
Credit: Google Maps
In 2019, promising news came in the form of a collaborative development proposal that would address something the city and region desperately needs: more housing geared towards Indigenous communities.
The Bawating Urban Indigenous Committee (BUIC) and the City of Sault Ste. Marie began a process of assessing the suitability of the (south) Gateway site for residential housing, which began in earnest with a preliminary environmental assessment. The proposed $40 million development would feature 120 mixed housing units, green space, cultural space, a friendship centre, an interpretive centre, and a childcare facility.
Like the proposals that predated this one, it disintegrated.
That was a great shame.
The project would have been an impressive collaboration between different levels of government and Indigenous communities and organizations.
Astonishingly, local media were content with reporting the fact that BUIC was walking away from the project without asking any questions.
That was a big surprise.
We knew that a preliminary environmental assessment was done and shared with the stakeholders.
Shortly thereafter, the proposed development project joined the others in the dustbin.
What exactly did that environmental assessment uncover?
Records received through freedom of information requests shed some light on the process behind the scenes.
Although it was reasonably anticipated but not fleshed out with much detail, the project disintegrated once the level of contamination and projected remediation costs were known.
BUIC contracted a well-known environmental consulting firm, Pinchin, to conduct a “Phase I” assessment. According to Pinchin, its mission was “to assess potential issues of environmental concern in relation to the potential acquisition and redevelopment of the Site.”
Pinchin’s assessment included “a review of readily available historical and regulatory records, a Site reconnaissance, interviews, [and] an evaluation of information and reporting.”
Its assessment did, however, include some limitations, including a lack of access to city directories (due to the pandemic) that could establish a fuller picture of historical activities on site and in proximity.
Pinchin also advised that more analysis is required if a formal Record of Site Condition (required for brownfield redevelopment) is the desired result of the assessment process. Pinchin assumed the veracity of all data that it collected.
Historical records analyzed by Pinchin include a range of previous environmental assessments conducted between 1997 and 2006.
An environmental assessment from 2006 “identified silt, sand, gravel and miscellaneous debris (i.e., bricks, concrete, wood, slag, and metal) fill materials throughout the Site.” Further, “the fill materials were noted to be extensive across the entirety of the property.”
Aerial photography and historical records show that the site housed two of Algoma Steel’s wastewater settling ponds for decades, just to the east of the Mill Market.
Credit: Pinchin, Phase I Environmental Assessment (for BUIC)
Pinchin advised that “these historical on-Site settling basins have resulted in subsurface impacts at the Site.”
Another environmental assessment from 2006 noted that “previous subsurface investigations identified soil and groundwater impacted with PHCs, VOCs, metals, cyanide, and ammonia.” The report also notes that Algoma Steel decommissioned the settling basins in the early 2000s, removed contaminated soil, and “backfilled [the basins] with blast furnace slag and clay.”
Pinchin summarizes its analysis of historical records with this:
“Reported concentrations for select contaminants [metals/inorganics, petroleum hydrocarbons (PHCs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs)] in soil and groundwater were above the applicable standards throughout the Site due to historical on and off-Site operations. Historical on-Site operations include the Algoma Steel wastewater settling basins along the eastern portion of the property and extensive importation of fill material of unknown quality across the majority of the subject lands. The off-Site industrial activities include the current steel mill and former paper mill to the west, the former chromium plant and scrap metal yard to the north, and the current and former rail yards to the north and east. Therefore, based on the above information, it is Pinchin’s opinion that the former on and off-Site operations and features have resulted in subsurface impacts at the Site and should be further assessed to determine the current conditions and environmental quality.”
In addition to the contamination attributed to Algoma Steel, other industrial sites previously in proximity are highlighted as potential sources of contamination. In Pinchin’s words, the following sources “may have resulted in subsurface impacts at the Site:”
· The Algoma Central and Hudson Bay Railway
· Abitibi Power and Paper Co. Ltd.
· Traders Metal Co.
· Chromium Mining and Smelting Limited
Once its environmental assessment was complete, Pinchin presented its preliminary analysis to BUIC.
Email correspondence between Sault Ste. Marie’s Deputy CAO of Community Development and Enterprise Services, Tom Vair, and the Executive Director Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services, Justin Marchand, shows that the project disintegrated shortly thereafter.
In May and June of 2020, Marchand was optimistic about the project’s potential.
Writing to Vair in May of 2020, he said: “We are still targeting to get a dollar estimate on the clean-up/remediation costs so that we can use that info to work together with you on a final price and get the land transferred by this Fall.”
The following month, Marchand reported that the project received a substantial amount of funding from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to cover the redevelopment steps that would follow the Phase I assessment. Marchand said that after the results of Phase I were complete, “we believe we will have the data we need to work with you on firming up an Agreement of Purchase & Sale.”
That enthusiasm quickly vanished.
Credit: Pinchin, Presentation of Phase I Environmental Assessment (for BUIC)
Responding to an inquiry from Vair about Pinchin’s presentation to BUIC, Marchand responded: “Yes, we had our presentation from Pinchin. Our group took some time to digest the info from Pinchin and to consider that along with what our original vision was/is with a focus on the people we serve. Today, we met to reach a conclusion.”
A week later, the stakeholders met via Zoom.
Minutes after the short meeting, Marchand offered Pinchin’s environmental assessment to the City and asked about how the eventual announcement should be communicated, writing: “We should discuss an external communications approach and timing once we have let this sink in; it would be good to remain on the same page together.”
Credit: Pinchin, Presentation of Phase I Environmental Assessment (for BUIC)
Vair then had the task of soliciting a formal letter from Marchand to include in an upcoming City Council agenda, which would eventually reveal details to the broader public.
Marchand wrote to Vair: “I plan on keeping it simple. I’m thinking I will only reference that we completed a Phase 1 ESA but was not planning on elaborating.”
Vair responds: “Yes, sounds good to me.”
That agreement to keep details to a minimum was reflected in the eventual letter from Marchand to the Mayor and City Council.
It read, in part:
“Our team has reached consensus that the Gateway Site is not the site for our development. The work we completed included a Phase 1 Environmental Site Assessment which was conducted in accordance with the Canadian Standards Association and completed by a reputable, national engineering firm.”
Vair did, however, share some details in a Council Report on the matter that ended up in a Council Agenda (and minutes) from December of 2020.
There, he wrote: “BUIC felt that a significant level of remediation and cost would be required in order to fulfill their vision for the use of the property.”
What’s still unclear is the total cost estimated for the necessary remediation if residential housing is going to meet provincial standards. Details related to costs were withheld.
Credit: Pinchin, Presentation of Phase I Environmental Assessment (for BUIC)
Pinchin ultimately recommended a “Phase II” environmental assessment that would include collecting new soil and water samples. A previous assessment (included in Pinchin’s analysis) estimated the total amount of soil requiring treatment or removal at over 93,000 cubic metres.
Pinchin said that’s roughly equivalent to 37 Olympic size swimming pools. It also mentioned that small landfills in Ontario typically contain around 40,000 cubic metres.
Remediation is not the only option, however.
Redevelopment could instead adopt risk mitigation measures, like limiting basements or drinking water, “to prevent the contaminants to come into contact with site occupants.”
Earlier this year, City Council began a process of exploring the development of residential housing as a municipal project on the site.
Stay tuned as this story develops.