Hazardous materials found in Gardiner won’t hinder repair timeline

Despite the discovery of more than expected hazardous materials on the Gardiner Expressway, Toronto city officials say the repair work remains on schedule.

Frank Clarizio, director of capital works delivery with the city’s engineering and construction services department, said they were expected to find approximately 400 cubic metres of hazardous material in the Gardiner’s base as median repairs were conducted from Dufferin Road and Ellis Avenue.

However, they found 10 times the amount.

“Once we’ve ascertained, through the testing, as well as determined the extent of contamination, we found that figure to be extensively more. In the order of 4,000 cubic metres,” Clarizio said.

The materials included salt, zinc and lead. Clarizio added that although salt isn’t considered toxic to humans, is it hazardous to the ecological surroundings.

“With respect to the other materials, there are varying degrees of toxicity and some of them are not as hazardous as opposed to the others – for example zinc isn’t but lead, to a certain degree, can be hazardous,” he explained.

Clarizio said the salt usually comes from the road salting operation from the winter maintenance but the other materials could have been there for decades.

“They could have been existing from when the expressway was originally constructed in the 50s and 60s,” he said. “The level of contaminants and their toxicities have changed from year to year and I guess in the current state they are toxic or they need to be handled in a different way than they would be in the past.”

Because of the hazardous material findings, work by the overnight crew was stopped for about two weeks while proper disposal sites could be found. Four thousand cubic tons of material is roughly enough to fill 180 dump trucks.

Clarizio said despite the delay, the city is still on track to have the Gardiner repair work completed by the fall.