By CHIP MARTIN

Before he entered politics, Joe Preston was a community activist in St. Thomas. The businessperson and restaurateur helped many worthy causes as he worked to make his community a better place to live.

When he ran for office as the Conservative MP for Elgin-Middlesex-London a few years back, his former friends and associates remembered his good work and, by electing him, became his constituents.

Today, Preston is facing a major challenge, his first big hurdle, in making his community a better and safer place. Preston wants to see his federal government clean up the environmental mess that is the harbour at scenic Port Stanley.

And he wants to tap into the $33-billion Building Canada fund to do it. The program is aimed at creating jobs, fixing environmental problems and stimulating economic development.

Cleaning up the witch's brew of chemicals in the federally owned harbour, adjacent lands and Kettle Creek and dredging the silt-filled channel would meet the program requirements. And provide some much-needed relief for the area's auto-dependent economy.

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Infrastructure Minister John Baird have said the infrastructure money is burning a hole in their pockets and they want to start spending it to stimulate the economy.

The program is aimed mainly at municipalities that must apply for capital works funds for their projects, but many are still putting together their wish lists.

The harbour at Port Stanley contains coal tar, mercury, arsenic, selenium, toluene, heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other toxins that have proven harmful or deadly for human or aquatic life.

Already, coal tar and mercury are being swept by a plume of water from the harbour mouth to the intake for the Elgin area water supply system that supplies drinking water to 100,000 customers from Port Stanley to St. Thomas and to the part of London lying south of Commissioners Road.
The concern is other chemicals may enter that plume and intake pipe. Officials insist the water is safe. Now.

The federal government, Preston says, can spend on capital works projects that are needed, whether municipalities ask for them or not. In Nova Scotia, the federal government joined the province in sinking $400 million into cleaning up the Sydney tar ponds because it was needed. Preston said the same thing should happen with Port Stanley.

But Preston has to deal with federal bureaucrats on the Port Stanley file who have bludgeoned tiny Central Elgin (population 13,000) into submission.

A cone of silence has been imposed on local officials on the pretext of protecting the interests of third parties. Local residents concerned about toxins in the harbour have been kept in the dark and they worry about being saddled with the costs of cleanup and dredging. They want answers their cowed councillors cannot provide.

So it's up to Preston to persuade Transport Canada, Public Works, government services and other bureaucrats to get the harbour ship-shape before Ottawa transfers ownership anywhere. Preston readily accepts the feds allowed the mess and are responsible to fix it.
Preston has a bit more clout in Ottawa since Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed him caucus chair for Southwestern Ontario. In that role, he will assess infrastructure projects he feels are worthy of support. He is the closest thing to a cabinet minister the Conservative government has in the London-centred region.

So, residents concerned about potential threats to their drinking water, upset at the glacial pace of secretive divestiture talks and anxious to get big boats, possibly ferries, back into a silt-filled harbour are pinning their homes on their community-activist-turned-MP.
Preston is talking the talk about the federal government doing the right thing for Port Stanley and his constituents.
We will be watching to see if he can turn that talk into action. It's not just the future of Port Stanley that's at stake here.
It could be the health of a region.

Chip Martin is a political reporter with The London Free Press. His column appears on Saturdays.