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Potential contractors met with the federal government today to discuss ways to cut down on the cost of cleaning up Randle Reef. This comes a month after all bids on the project came in over budget.

Bidders were able to give their feedback today to the project team led by Environment Canada on ways to keep the cost of the cleanup within the $139 million dollar target.

Construction was set to begin early this spring. Today key players were able to ask experts in the industry if there were ways to save money in the area of construction.

The plan is to build a 7.5 hectare containment box over the worst coal tar contamination and to hydraulically dredge the rest of the 630 thousand cubic metres of toxic sediment into the steel containment facility.
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Director of Hamilton Water Dan McKinnon says it was a positive meeting.

“There was a variety of themes that were covered as I mentioned around the way it was procured, how you distribute risk things that are fairly typical to large construction contracts. This project to the average person is a complicated project but to the folks who do this type of work I don’t think it’s extraordinarily complex. So I think that the themes that were covered today were the right ones and there was certainly lots of talk about it so I think it was beneficial day, I think they got some good information today”

McKinnon says Environment Canada will now go over all of the information gathered over the next few weeks. They will then meet with the stakeholders again.