On cleaning up one's messes

The Globe and Mail reports on the environmental disaster that is the former Winisk air force base - and the complete lack of any action beyond finger-pointing:

The abandoned buildings are still standing but the windows have long been smashed. In the frigid cavernous interiors, the wind scatters pads of deadly asbestos lying on the chipped concrete floor.

Outside, lie rusting hulks that were once diggers and trucks, their paint peeling and toxic chemicals from their batteries and ancient radiators seeping into the fragile permafrost.

Nearby, stands a small mountain of rusted metal drums. Locals say there are as many as 10,000 of them scattered throughout the area and hundreds more lie at the bottom of a small pond nearby...

And Winisk isn't the only area still left with severe environmental damage left over from several decades ago:

Winisk is not the only former radar base in Northern Ontario with severe ecological problems. Base 415 at Cape Henrietta Maria, deep in the Polar Bear Provincial Park, was also part of the Mid Canada Line.

An environmental study commissioned in the 1990s by the Mushkegowuk Council, an umbrella group for many of the native groups in the area, found asbestos, PCBs and other pollutants at the site. The study also found evidence that a large above-ground storage tank was still leaking diesel fuel into the tundra.

Another study shows that a third former site, known as 06 and located between Moosonee and Cochrane, is also badly contaminated.

The article indicates that the federal government's reason for inaction is a claim that the bases were built on provincial land. But that's something less than a compelling explanation when the damage is solely the result of a federal project. And even if the explanation is technically correct, the sole result should be to make all provinces wary about cooperating with federal efforts in the future...since they've apparently been left to deal with all the consequences of abandoned federal projects to date.

What little credit should be given goes to the Ontario provincial government, which has cleaned up one former base site due to a particularly urgent need. But that's small consolation to those still in the path of toxic substances whose effects won't stay buried.