DEW Line cleanup continues in Nunavut

Work is set to begin in the new year to clean up two more DEW Line sites in Nunavut, at Cape Peel and Ross Point.

The two sites are among the remaining dozen stations in the Kitikmeot region in Nunavut. They were part of the radar tracking Distant Early Warning Line created across the North in the 1950s and '60s in an effort to protect North America from attack at the height of the Cold War.

The sitesfeatured experimental housing modules, state of the art communications structures and airstrips. After they were abandoned, the sites were found to be contaminated with chemicals, including large quantities of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

"The contaminants at the time weren't really considered contaminants," Natalie Plato, director of the Northern Contaminated Sites Program in Nunavut, told CBC News.

"There were different disposal practices of the day," she said. "People just dumped it on the ground,"

All the contaminated soil and materials will be shipped to Alberta for disposal, she said.

Because the two Kitikmeot sites are remote, cleanup is expected to cost anywhere from $8 million to $12 million.

The goal is to return all the DEW Line sites to their original states, Lou Spagnuolo, with the contaminated sites program, told CBC News.

Signs of success

Spagnuolo admits the goal may not be possible, but he said there have been signs of success in previous cleanup efforts.

"We do have a lot of anecdotal evidence from people who have visited a lot of our sites after our remediation and they've noticed a significant increase in the amount of wildlife that return to the area"

The DEW Line system was officially shut down in 1993, with the U.S. handing over all operations to Canada. In 1998, the federal government signed a $230-million cleanup agreement with Inuit leaders, with an expectation the work would create at least 900 jobs.

The federal government plan is to have all DEW Line sites cleaned up by 2018.