Port Stanley harbour: Central Elgin Mayor Tom Marks says ‘No community has ended up with a better deal’
By CHIP MARTIN The London Free Press

PORT STANLEY — The federal government turned over its harbour here to local control Wednesday, along with $13.6 million for operations and maintenance,
The move concludes 15 years of harbour divestiture talks.

Transport Canada has also vowed to clean up contaminated harbour lands to parkland standards and accept liability for the harbour bed’s environmental condition.
“No community has ended up with a better deal,” boasted Central Elgin Mayor Tom Marks, who signed the final papers earlier in the day. Marks said the municipality can chart the harbour’s future, clearing the way for new economic development and boosting tourism.

“We have the power to direct how they (harbour lands) develop,” he told about 50 dignitaries and citizens in a harbourside ceremony.
He said the harbour won’t become a burden on local ratepayers because of the $13.6 million.

Central Elgin had sought $30 million from federal coffers to help transform the industrial port into a tourist mecca with a new Stork Club-community centre, marina and other attractions.

Marks said the federal contribution won’t permit such redevelopment.

“It may not be what everyone wanted,” he conceded, but he added the community can use tools such as user fees to plot a new future.
Joe Preston, Conservative MP for Elgin-Middlesex-London, called the harbour transfer a monumental achievement.
“I am most proud of this outcome of any announcement I have been able to make,” he said.

Preston recalled shortly after he took office he learned private interests were trying to buy the harbour.
“That upset me,” he said, so he and the late Sylvia Hofhuis, the Central Elgin mayor who died last March, became determined to do right for the community by ensuring Central Elgin got it.

“Well, Sylvia,” Preston said, choking up, “it’s done and it’s right.” Preston said he will personally ensure Transport Canada lives up to its promises to clean up the land above water and the harbour bed where a witch’s brew of chemicals and compounds have been found.
Aside from the land above and below water, the property includes two breakwaters, two piers and a building. Part of the federal money will be used for dredging of the harbour to a depth suitable for recreational boating and commercial fishing.

The harbour hasn’t been dredged since 2001 and freighters can no longer enter. Harbour consultant Mark Conway said Port Stanley’s days as an industrial harbour are history.

chip.martin@sunmedia.ca