Cleanup for contaminated sites rises by $600M

The debts associated with cleaning up the federal government’s environmental liabilities, including sites with explosive weapons, grew by about $600 million over the past year, said newly released financial records that were tabled in Parliament on Tuesday.

The financial liabilities, associated mainly with contamination of about 2,400 sites from industrial and other activities, reached about $8.36 billion as of March 31, 2012, according to the public accounts documents released by Treasury Board president Tony Clement.

The documents also suggested that these liabilities for cleanup costs could still increase by as much as $1.5 billion in the future, depending on ongoing evaluations. The total estimate of the known liabilities reflected an increase from liabilities of about $7.75 billion, estimated one year earlier.

The liabilities included 43 sites with potentially explosive weapons, also known as unexploded explosive ordnance affected sites, that were identified by the Department of National Defence.

These sites were estimated to cost about $4 million to clean up, but management has also estimated possible additional costs ranging from $180 million to $524 million to deal with the unexploded weapons that were possibly leftover from past military operations, the government said.

The newly released records also suggested additional cleanup costs for contaminated sites of $1.1 billion that were considered to be “undeterminable at this time.”