By Chip Martin

Port Stanley residents gather tonight to consider how to break a long-standing political logjam and wrest its harbour from federal hands.

The Port Stanley Think Tank is pushing to end a source of local aggravation and get local control of the village's greatest asset.

Transport Canada wants to divest itself of the harbour it has allowed to clog with silt, making it unsuitable for anything except fishing tugs. But after years of high-level talks in secrecy, fed-up local residents are taking action.

"This is a huge issue locally," said Andrew Hibbert, a member of the think tank who organized the meeting. "It's a critical issue and it's been very frustrating to people in the village."

He said private interests are reluctant to make plans with the future of the port so uncertain. Investors on the American side of Lake Erie have talked about cross-lake ferries, but the state of the harbour is so bad and ownership issues so confused they've had to shelve their plans.

Retired Canadian rear admiral Dan McNeil, who has waged a battle to uncover federal plans and the physical state of the harbour, will address the meeting and suggest a path forward.

McNeil said he believes the current talks should be abandoned and a new course of consultation initiated among the Municipality of Central Elgin, Elgin County,

Transport Canada and the province. Also needed is a viable plan to fix environmental contamination.

"We're going to develop some proposals," McNeil said, adding he hopes the community gathering will be the first step in a successful bid to resolve the issue of ownership. The alternative is to see the harbour decline further under federal control.

McNeil said he learned MP Joe Preston (C -- Elgin- Middlesex-London) had persuaded Transport Canada to dredge the harbour last spring, but enactment of the Clean Water Act by the Ontario government was one of the reasons that was scuttled. Ontario's new law would forbid the former practice of disposing contaminated harbour sediment offshore.