MOE approves rail lands clean-up

The Ontario Environment Ministry has cleared the rail lands for development and approved a site-specific risk assessment done by North Bay, city CEO David Linkie says.

Linkie said the city received the approval from the ministry yesterday, allowing the current project slated for development, Marina Point, to go forward.

The site-specific risk assessment is a strategy for dealing with any use and development of the rail lands, from an environmental point of view.

“As a result of their approval, the ministry eyes residential use on that property as safe and appropriate,” Linkie said, adding contaminated soil had been removed from the Marina Point site, located at the foot of Cassells Street, and replaced with clean soil.

Monitoring wells had also been dug to test ground water and make sure it met ministry standards, Linkie said.

Rail lands remediation work has been going on for two years now, and the city had submitted the risk assessment documentation to the ministry last December, Linkie said.

Now that approval has been given from the MOE, Marina Point can proceed to the building permit stage.

“We have a couple of items to clean up on our agreement with city and we should be good to go next week,” said Joe DiPietro, spokesman for Dalron Construction, which is building Marina Point.

“We’re very excited because the city did a fantastic job meeting the requirements of the MOE, and they should be commended on the amount of work they did.”