Thanks for the links. Rather elaborate expectations they have (so I don't see them necessarily coming to fruition any time soon). Still have difficulty seeing that strip of land between the subway line, the yard and the Allen as being at all interesting for housing.
And no, I don't work for the city. I happen to live in a neighbourhood that requires the snow to be removed when it piles up. I've seen them load the trucks, seen the trucks head up north, and seen them dump the snow for the pile.
Any garbage that is in there is the same garbage that insensitive people throw on our city streets (cups, plastic bottles, wrappers, cigarette butts, etc.). The city is not sending their garbage trucks to dump their loads in the snow pile.
What other contaminants do you think is in there that would require environmental sampling? Even if there is slightly higher contamination of miscellaneous street chemicals picked up by the snow, where else should it be dumped?
Further along the Downsview property, just beyond the DRDC building (formerly DCIEM) there is a newish building. Years ago it used to be an oil depot on the airbase. When they were looking to develop that site, they brought in a company to do soil remediation in the mid-90s.
They dug up all the soil down to 3 - 5m and ran it through a furnace contraption to vapourize the hydrocarbons which were then funnelled to a high temperature combustion chamber for a relatively clean burn. Output product was a pile of steaming 'clean' dirt.
I would think the contaminants at that location far exceeded anything that might result from the melting of a big pile of snow from city streets.
