DND to start removing thousands of ammunition shells from lakeFor almost 50 years, the Department of National Defence pounded Lac St. Pierre, near Trois-Rivieres, Que., with shells as big as 155 millimetres -- the size of a big fire log -- to test its ammunition.
By CanWest News Service September 9, 2007
For almost 50 years, the Department of National Defence pounded Lac St. Pierre, near Trois-Rivieres, Que., with shells as big as 155 millimetres -- the size of a big fire log -- to test its ammunition.
The area has been dubbed a minefield and DND maintains a year round "caution zone," including floating signs on the lake, to advise boaters and others users of the danger of ordnance lurking underwater.
Local residents have been lobbying DND for years to remove an estimated 8,000 live shells from the lake's bottom. And they finally have a first victory.
After years of delay, DND has launched a program to clean the lake that is a major stopover for migrating waterfowl in eastern Canada, and a UNESCO biosphere reserve for its bird population and pristine vegetation.
"It's very paradoxical," says Philippe Giroul, the leader of a local lobby group of some 2,500 residents. "The site is protected for birds, but it's not always safe for residents."
Twenty-five years ago tragedy hit a Lac St. Pierre beach when a shell, mistaken for an old pipe, was thrown in a campfire. It exploded and killed Pierre Gentes and wounded nine others.
Gentes' brothers Francois and Paul have been fighting ever since to get the military to clean the beaches and the lake.
"We want to send a note of caution to the population. They still have to be very careful," said Paul Gentes.
Every year, especially in the spring, when ice can move the shells, and the summer, when the water is low, shells are found on the beach or in the water. Only two weeks ago, two shells were found.
Jean-Francois Mathieu, coordinator of a group called ZIP that does shoreline sweeps in the area, said the shell found by his team looked like a "big metal log with a sharp end."
Lac St. Pierre, a broadening of the St. Lawrence River between Montreal and Quebec, still holds 300,000 artillery shells and an estimated 8,000 of them could still carry an explosive charge.
More than 500,000 projectiles were fired into the lake, starting in 1952 when the army chose to install its munitions experimental test centre in Nicolet, because of its proximity to ammunition factories in the two larger Quebec cities.
Nicolet was used to test ammunition ranging in calibre from 20 millimetre to 155 millimetre and the firing range covered an area of about 160 square kilometres.
It wasn't until 2000 that the firing into the lake stopped. DND continues to test ammunition in Nicolet, but it is now aimed at stop butts, dirt and concrete mounds. Giroul is happy with DND's move to go ahead with the cleanup. "It's a great victory. We have been waiting for that for 17 years and we can't wait for the actual cleanup to start. But it's going to be long," says Giroul.
The removal of some of the lake's shells -- not all, since it's practically impossible -- will take some five to seven years. But it will be another 18 months to two years before the clean up can actually start.
"Before we go ahead with the clearance, we have to undergo an environmental assessment, a joint provincial and federal process," explained Capt. Matt Braid, program director for the cleaning of Lake St. Pierre.
"But in the meantime, we are not going to sit there and wait. We are doing work in Lac St. Pierre," Braid said.
DND will spent $9 million to prepare for the clean up of Lac St. Pierre, including studies and underwater ammunition detonation. The department hopes it can find new technologies for the clean up, because using divers trained in explosives will be slow and costly to remove. The work in Lac St. Pierre is part of the unexploded explosive ordnance program (UXO), a multi-year project that will identify, assess and, in some cases, remove the military's decades-old munitions across the country.
Over 700 lots of land in Canada have been identified by UXO as littered with potentially explosive debris, most of it grenades and mortars scattered across former army firing ranges. There also are additional danger zones in the Atlantic Ocean. But Lac St. Pierre is a priority site for DND.
"It's on the high end of our spectrum of sites because of the risks," of it being in a very populated area, said Baird.
Even if residents welcome the cleaning up of the lake, they won't be happy until the test centre in Nicolet is shut down for good. Giroul says that it bothers residents and that some days when DND tests ammunition, they are still not allowed to go on part of the lake near the test centre.
"I'm not going to rest before we win that last battle," Giroul said.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=dbe471ca-9114-49a1-900b-813aa5e69fe6&k=87244
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