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Costly radiation remediation at Port Hope

Port Hope radiation: $464,615 spent to remediate $130,000 house thestar.com  October 05, 2012 PORT HOPE, ONT.—It started in the attic. Wally Davis wanted to build a room in the attic of his house. Since he lives in Port Hope, he couldn’t just go ahead and do it. He went to the Low Level Radioactive Waste Management Office, a federal agency, requested the file on his property and asked them to test for remnants of historic radioactive waste.

“There was contamination in the roof, on the floors, in the walls . . . everywhere in the house,” said Davis, 75, a retired Ontario Hydro employee.

In July 2011, Davis and his wife, Carole, were relocated to neighbouring Cobourg as agency staff started remediation work. The couple returned to their two-bedroom, 1,000-square-foot home this July and discovered that except for the outer walls, it had been essentially rebuilt.

“They did a superb job,” Davis said.

They did indeed. The waste management office spent $464,615 to clean up the house Davis bought a decade ago for $125,000 — or $130,000, he can’t remember.

“We didn’t have a clue how much they spent,” said Davis when the Star told him that almost a half-million dollars had been used to remediate his home.

“They didn’t tell us,” he said. “That is a lot of money.”The Davis home on Bruton St., in a leafy old part of town, is about two kilometres from the waterfront. It has a red-brick façade, an attached garage and a large front and back yard. There’s a shed in the back and a Canadian flag fluttering on a tall post.

Port Hope, the picture-pretty lakeside town about 110 kilometres east of Toronto, will soon see the biggest cleanup of historic radioactive waste in Canadian history. Fifty years of radium and uranium refining at the Cameco refinery, formerly Crown corporation Eldorado Nuclear Ltd., has left contamination spread around the town…. http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/1267186–port-hope-radiation-464-615-spent-to-remediate-130-000-house

October 5, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, environment, Uranium