The acting Auditor General of Nova Scotia has released his 2020 performance audit report Tuesday.
Terry Spicer examined the processes the province uses to identify and manage contaminated sites in the province and made four recommendations, the main one being better oversight.
“What we found here is that there isn’t a consistent, co-ordinated approach to identifying these various sites. All of these sites need to be looked at together so that those sites that pose the highest risk are the ones that are addressed first.”
Another of his recommendations is for a complete inventory of known and potentially contaminated sites, so that they can be seen at all together in a complete provincial-wide listing.
“People can look at this and say, regardless of what department these sites fall into, these particular ones pose the most risk from a provincial perspective, so that they’re not looked at in isolation, depending on what department they sit in.”
Spicer says such a list would make it easier to quickly know which have been assessed, what the nature of the assessment was, and whether or not they need to continue monitoring the site.
“This should be looked at from a provincial perspective and those sites that pose the highest risk are the ones that get addressed and it’s really making sure that, with limited resources, as we know the province has, that those resources are put to the areas that are need the most.”
He says they looked at two of the largest departments, Lands and Forestry and Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal.
The government has agreed to the recommendations and their implementation will be assessed in two years.
