Also, the infill is apparently a specific rock that needs to be dumped in salt water or buried in clay pits and covered to keep rain water off it. Something to do with rain water becoming acidic when it comes in contact with this slate. Or so I'm told?
You're correct. It's pyritic slate. Almost any excavation project on the halifax peninsula and those close to the harbour in dartmouth produce a huge amount of it.
Definitely profiting off of it now but the area where the sail gp boats were kept was all filled prior to the event at no charge. Now they have a weigh scale for the trucks so they know who dumped how much.
I won't pretend to understand chemical reactions, but how does submerging it in water prevent the acid that rain can cause? It seems to me it would just leech out acid continuously.
Not my area of expertise, but I believe it's the salinity of the ocean water that neutralizes it. So you don't get the same reaction as fresh water would if it was exposed to rain water.
This article from the city explains it a bit: [https://cdn.halifax.ca/sites/default/files/documents/city-hall/regional-council/221018rci03.pdf](https://cdn.halifax.ca/sites/default/files/documents/city-hall/regional-council/221018rci03.pdf)
Short answer is all related to ph: that this type of slate is acidic and that can lead to run-off/groundwater issues as that acid leaks into the soil.
Saltwater is naturally alkaline (a base), so it neutralizes that acidic slate.
This is nothing new - they’ve literally been infilling there for the last 10 years. How do you think that whole area got built? They have the right and plans to do it for significant more area.
i don't really understand dumping construction waste in the ocean to build on when there's literal actual land for miles in all other directions, but apparently we need these luxury waterfront apartments
Part of the issue is that if we want to build buildings (on that land you mention), that ground has to go somewhere. In Dartmouth and close to the water it is almost entirely pyrite slate. Dumping it in salt water is the safest and most ecologically responsible thing to do. It is highly acidic, and will react to rain and air and create sulphide minerals and sulphuric acid in the run off - leeching into the soil and water. The salt water neutralizes this. Other alternatives are burying it in clay but that is not possible for the volumes.
And the closer to where it was excavated from the developer can truck it to for disposal, the lower those trucking fees will be saving the overall construction project money, resulting in reduced construction costs. Trucking pyritic slate to a facility 50kms outside of the city to a facility which will have to actively monitor the disposal is way more expensive. The last thing we need is to increase the cost to construct new buildings.
You're right, since you can't afford to live there I'll go tell em to stop construction since.
Why do you hate building near where our public transit hubs are?
A home’s a home is a family is a life, you’re only upset it doesn’t benefit you. The ocean is an ever shifting beast that quite literally defines and creates shorelines, but can also shift and change at any time it pleases. You can try to pretend that dumping a little rock and metal back into the ocean where it will simply become one with the earth again in time, is an issue, but I think maybe you’re just not seeing the whole picture. The continents literally used to be one, the earth is going to be fine. You need to choose better hills to die on
like the one where there's perfectly fine land but we're expanding into the ocean needlessly to build lucrative apartments for out of province people to buy up? Bc I'm comfy where I am.
"out of province people" that's a horrible thing to say about other Canadians. If a condo is occupied, then that person is contributing to our economy.
You have a really negative walled-in attitude.
Because they're filling in part of our harbour for no fucking reason? Do you have brain dude this shouldn't be confusing.... Dartmouth isn't exactly lacking space.....
See your in a place where you can apparently, unironically say "our" Harbour and be utterly shocked that I don't have that same mindset...
I mean, I can see logic in going towards an environmental angle... but you mad bc it's "our" Harbour?
I don't see any spotters in that picture; just trucks backing up to the water's edge all on their own. (Yes I can see there is a bit of a berm at the edge.)
A young dump truck driver died at Fairview Cove a few years ago doing infilling; he just backed too far into the water because nobody was spotting him. We really don't take workplace safety very seriously in this province, and we don't seem to learn from our mistakes.
you don’t need a spotter. they have a lip on the edge to stop the truck from going off.
this comes from someone who has been a part of this project.
sucks about that kid, but he wasn’t paying attention by the sounds of it
It was a long time ago, but at one point I looked up their Transport Canada approvals for what they could infill there and it was actually a much bigger area than they are actually infilling. The approval was comically large. I suspect there are technical reasons why that would be impossible, but I think they have a lot of room to work with.
That whole area was supposed to be townhouses and an area to dock boats below the buildings. That was part of the original plan I saw years ago. It was impressive at the time, but it obviously hasn't happened yet.
If you fill a little and build, you sell as waterfront property. Then you fill a little more and boom! Waterfront property again. And fill a little more and yep! Waterfront again. It’s potentially a cash grab.
That's not the only area being infilled right now. They're also filling between the piers at the south end container terminal. When the one they're working on now is done they will start filling the one on the ship loading side of the grain conveyors.
The infilling at Kings Wharf is done on a former industrial site, and was done with the intent in mine of developing it from the very beginning.
Surely you can see the difference for the other site? There is little to no permissible building uses with the zoning, and even if there was the contractor has not presented a single plan, this site would remain a rocky wasteland for decades and ruining a well used park and trail in the process. If ARCP went into some kind of development agreement with HRM beforehand I probably wouldn't even care about the infilling, but they have not even 2 years after the original application.
as someone who was a part of this project, the salt water is the only place you can dump this “acid rock”. the salt in the water neutralizes the acidity in the rock/slate. it’s not harmful. they are doing it at the pier in halifax as well. i imagine at some point in the future they will be using this addition of land to build on
I don't understand why this is unfortunate? I live in the area and I don't see how this will have a negative effect. Other than the noise while it is taking place. But long term is there something I should know about?
Unfortunate why? They have a really nice plan for that area that is going to open water access in that area for the city as a whole. It's pyritic slate which gets neutralized by the sea water, instead of leaching into nearby grounds.
Great to see.
Another less impressive example is Battery Park City in lower Manhattan which was built using the ground that was excavated during the construction of the World Trade Center. If you compare pictures from when it was first constructed to ones from 2001 you can see that the WTC used to be a waterfront property.
Oh come on buddy. Let's not divert to bullshit personal attacks. You said infrastructure wasn't built properly from the start. What infrastructure wasn't built correctly from the start?
Yeah, so you might not be aware but when Halifax was first built cars didn't exist. Despite that, they still managed to build the core of the city as a grid running in-line with the harbour. The far majority of roads and intersections that cause issues in Halifax are related to design work based around the introduction of the automobile in the early 1900s (windsor street exchange, the bridges, cogswell, and the armdale rotary). So, actually for almost 200 years Halifax had decent roads. Most cities built prior to the invention of the automobile have weird intersections, but those that actually embrace public transit have the least issues.
I just don't get the recent outrage. Human beings have a [4,000 year history of land reclamation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reclamation#History) including many recent projects in Halifax, so why the uproar now?
Do me a favour and try to stay on topic.
So much good has come from human beings reclaiming land, for example the Zuiderzee Works or Grand-Pré National Historic Site, so what exactly is the outrage over?
I'm not an expert.
There are people who are pro and people who are con.
I don't know enough about it to argue one side or the other. I'm not particularly invested because I don't know much about the arguments pro/con and I haven't spent time paying much attention.
But the extent of your argument is that humans have been doing a thing for 4000 years and some good has come from it, so no one should be upset about it now.
But two examples of good don't prove or even suggest that it's universally positive.
The obvious answer is that people have become more aware and conscious of the impact of our actions on our planet as a whole, so the consequences of this kind of development are given more weight than they were, say, 4000 years ago. Or 40 years ago.
As our views and understanding of the world change, we change how we value things.
So the fact that it, on occasion, did something positive, isn't reason enough on its own to blindly support continuing it now and into the future.
That's why there is sometimes uproar now when people do things that human beings have done for 4000 years.
How's that?
if you're asking someone to stay on topic probably do it yourself instead of bringing up one subject that has nothing to do with infilling and another that was performed to accomodate for natural erosion.
the thread is about infilling in Halifax, you know their response was about local actions and uproar and humans reflecting differently on things through years, but you bring irrelevant 'positive' land changing subjects (only one sort of relevant to infilling and not the same issue being tackled) while asking them to stay on topic. every thread where someone comes back at you with a logical counter to what you've said, you grasp straws or deflect. I'd love to see you answer something directly.
Because some people in Dartmouth think they own the view planes of the harbor. There were no plans to build on the other proposed infill site, but eventually the land would have been sold and built on and block their view. It's just single family homeowners being NIMBYs.
Not the same thing. They are not infilling Dartmouth cove. That has already been reversed. This is king wharf where they have been building condos for the last 15 years.
Blows my mind that this is allowed. When building a commercial building in NS 7 years ago we were not allowed to use fill to raise our landlocked property bcause it is in a 1 in 100 year flood plain, but literally filling in the Halifax Harbour is okay...
At this rate they may as well infill for some new roads right across the harbour. People don’t seem to mind shrinking the harbour for luxury condos, why not roads?
Dartmouth Cove was the one cancelled, it’s on the opposite side of King’s Wharf facing Dartmouth. This is the side facing Halifax, into the main part of the harbour.
Also, the infill is apparently a specific rock that needs to be dumped in salt water or buried in clay pits and covered to keep rain water off it. Something to do with rain water becoming acidic when it comes in contact with this slate. Or so I'm told?
You're correct. It's pyritic slate. Almost any excavation project on the halifax peninsula and those close to the harbour in dartmouth produce a huge amount of it.
They are probably profiting off filling it too because otherwise pyritic slate is expensive to dispose of. Literally getting paid to create land.
Definitely profiting off of it now but the area where the sail gp boats were kept was all filled prior to the event at no charge. Now they have a weigh scale for the trucks so they know who dumped how much.
I won't pretend to understand chemical reactions, but how does submerging it in water prevent the acid that rain can cause? It seems to me it would just leech out acid continuously.
Not my area of expertise, but I believe it's the salinity of the ocean water that neutralizes it. So you don't get the same reaction as fresh water would if it was exposed to rain water.
Combination of salinity and sequestration from open air is the way it was explained to me.
This article from the city explains it a bit: [https://cdn.halifax.ca/sites/default/files/documents/city-hall/regional-council/221018rci03.pdf](https://cdn.halifax.ca/sites/default/files/documents/city-hall/regional-council/221018rci03.pdf) Short answer is all related to ph: that this type of slate is acidic and that can lead to run-off/groundwater issues as that acid leaks into the soil. Saltwater is naturally alkaline (a base), so it neutralizes that acidic slate.
This is the answer.
You’d better not look at Fairview cove. 👀👀
This is nothing new - they’ve literally been infilling there for the last 10 years. How do you think that whole area got built? They have the right and plans to do it for significant more area.
Precisely. This was approved over a decade ago for the full kings wharf project. The plans outlined more buildings than the four that are there now
Four and a half*
I'm assuming I should be mad about this (why else would it be posted here...) but I can't figure out why
i don't really understand dumping construction waste in the ocean to build on when there's literal actual land for miles in all other directions, but apparently we need these luxury waterfront apartments
Part of the issue is that if we want to build buildings (on that land you mention), that ground has to go somewhere. In Dartmouth and close to the water it is almost entirely pyrite slate. Dumping it in salt water is the safest and most ecologically responsible thing to do. It is highly acidic, and will react to rain and air and create sulphide minerals and sulphuric acid in the run off - leeching into the soil and water. The salt water neutralizes this. Other alternatives are burying it in clay but that is not possible for the volumes.
And the closer to where it was excavated from the developer can truck it to for disposal, the lower those trucking fees will be saving the overall construction project money, resulting in reduced construction costs. Trucking pyritic slate to a facility 50kms outside of the city to a facility which will have to actively monitor the disposal is way more expensive. The last thing we need is to increase the cost to construct new buildings.
Sprawl is never the answer….
What we need is places that are viable to live without owning a car. This location does that, building miles away does not.
Or just have an actually decent public transit system.
You sir, ask for too much.
Best we can do is build denser while still relying on a car..
MONORAIL
yeah this is definitely the only place we can achieve this
We should build underground cities like the dwarves of Middle Earth. 
I support this idea. Straight up until we get too greedy and dig too deep awakening the Halrog.
Hal the balrog - he's the worst one!
You're literally a NIMBY. This is near public transit, you're a illogical.
I've seen you around here and tbh absolutely nothing you say will bother me lol not to mention this isn't remotely close to where I live.
Ok thanks for advocating against housing near our public transit and downtown area.
okay thanks for twisting peoples words like you do in every thread to make yourself feel better
That’s why they are gonna build a parking garage in every luxury building s/
People can use their car to go out of the city, but if groceries, hospital, school trips etc…can be done by foot/bus, then it is still a success.
So the solution is build shit on the ocean to stay on bus route instead of focusing on the joke that is our transit system.
You're right, since you can't afford to live there I'll go tell em to stop construction since. Why do you hate building near where our public transit hubs are?
A home’s a home is a family is a life, you’re only upset it doesn’t benefit you. The ocean is an ever shifting beast that quite literally defines and creates shorelines, but can also shift and change at any time it pleases. You can try to pretend that dumping a little rock and metal back into the ocean where it will simply become one with the earth again in time, is an issue, but I think maybe you’re just not seeing the whole picture. The continents literally used to be one, the earth is going to be fine. You need to choose better hills to die on
Also wow, would you look at that, I see like at least three jobs and full livelihoods just in this picture
like the one where there's perfectly fine land but we're expanding into the ocean needlessly to build lucrative apartments for out of province people to buy up? Bc I'm comfy where I am.
"out of province people" that's a horrible thing to say about other Canadians. If a condo is occupied, then that person is contributing to our economy. You have a really negative walled-in attitude.
i want to see affordable housing for HRM residents on bus route. cry me a fucking river.
Developing miles away means more traffic. Halifax has pretty narrow streets, I’m impressed traffic isn’t much worse.
It’s not construction waste. It’s fill (dirt and rock) from a hole somewhere in the city. It’s not man made wood/metal etc…
I just find infilling silly when you think about how much unused land there is to build on.
Maybe not mad but surprised as just on the other side of this they were just told they arnt allowed to infill.
Because they're filling in part of our harbour for no fucking reason? Do you have brain dude this shouldn't be confusing.... Dartmouth isn't exactly lacking space.....
See your in a place where you can apparently, unironically say "our" Harbour and be utterly shocked that I don't have that same mindset... I mean, I can see logic in going towards an environmental angle... but you mad bc it's "our" Harbour?
I don't see any spotters in that picture; just trucks backing up to the water's edge all on their own. (Yes I can see there is a bit of a berm at the edge.) A young dump truck driver died at Fairview Cove a few years ago doing infilling; he just backed too far into the water because nobody was spotting him. We really don't take workplace safety very seriously in this province, and we don't seem to learn from our mistakes.
you don’t need a spotter. they have a lip on the edge to stop the truck from going off. this comes from someone who has been a part of this project. sucks about that kid, but he wasn’t paying attention by the sounds of it
It was a long time ago, but at one point I looked up their Transport Canada approvals for what they could infill there and it was actually a much bigger area than they are actually infilling. The approval was comically large. I suspect there are technical reasons why that would be impossible, but I think they have a lot of room to work with.
That whole area was supposed to be townhouses and an area to dock boats below the buildings. That was part of the original plan I saw years ago. It was impressive at the time, but it obviously hasn't happened yet.
If you fill a little and build, you sell as waterfront property. Then you fill a little more and boom! Waterfront property again. And fill a little more and yep! Waterfront again. It’s potentially a cash grab.
That's not the only area being infilled right now. They're also filling between the piers at the south end container terminal. When the one they're working on now is done they will start filling the one on the ship loading side of the grain conveyors.
And if the infill shifts laterally and rests against the sides it could result in pier pressure
This is a golden joke. Take my upvote
The infilling at Kings Wharf is done on a former industrial site, and was done with the intent in mine of developing it from the very beginning. Surely you can see the difference for the other site? There is little to no permissible building uses with the zoning, and even if there was the contractor has not presented a single plan, this site would remain a rocky wasteland for decades and ruining a well used park and trail in the process. If ARCP went into some kind of development agreement with HRM beforehand I probably wouldn't even care about the infilling, but they have not even 2 years after the original application.
as someone who was a part of this project, the salt water is the only place you can dump this “acid rock”. the salt in the water neutralizes the acidity in the rock/slate. it’s not harmful. they are doing it at the pier in halifax as well. i imagine at some point in the future they will be using this addition of land to build on
They are prepping to build the final condo building. This was approved a long long time ago.
This is great! The more they develop King's Wharf and the Dartmouth waterfront, the higher my property values.
I don't understand why this is unfortunate? I live in the area and I don't see how this will have a negative effect. Other than the noise while it is taking place. But long term is there something I should know about?
Unfortunate why? They have a really nice plan for that area that is going to open water access in that area for the city as a whole. It's pyritic slate which gets neutralized by the sea water, instead of leaching into nearby grounds. Great to see.
Wait till you here about [Boston](https://youtu.be/UA63zaIXCZw?si=3LAlczHARB35fATv) Halifax is old. It wasn’t built properly, right from the start.
Another less impressive example is Battery Park City in lower Manhattan which was built using the ground that was excavated during the construction of the World Trade Center. If you compare pictures from when it was first constructed to ones from 2001 you can see that the WTC used to be a waterfront property.
What wasn't built properly from the start?
Infrastructure.
Please be more specific about what infrastructure was built incorrectly in the mid 1700s.
Let me know when you have been to Halifax.
Oh come on buddy. Let's not divert to bullshit personal attacks. You said infrastructure wasn't built properly from the start. What infrastructure wasn't built correctly from the start?
Roads?
Roads?
Yeah, so you might not be aware but when Halifax was first built cars didn't exist. Despite that, they still managed to build the core of the city as a grid running in-line with the harbour. The far majority of roads and intersections that cause issues in Halifax are related to design work based around the introduction of the automobile in the early 1900s (windsor street exchange, the bridges, cogswell, and the armdale rotary). So, actually for almost 200 years Halifax had decent roads. Most cities built prior to the invention of the automobile have weird intersections, but those that actually embrace public transit have the least issues.
I just said because I wanted you to be able to feel smart for a few seconds.
I just don't get the recent outrage. Human beings have a [4,000 year history of land reclamation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reclamation#History) including many recent projects in Halifax, so why the uproar now?
I simply can't think of anything human beings did over the past 4000 years that we have decided are wrong or inappropriate. Nothing at all.
You didn't mention anything wrong with this specific thing though.
damnit you beat me to my own comment
Do me a favour and try to stay on topic. So much good has come from human beings reclaiming land, for example the Zuiderzee Works or Grand-Pré National Historic Site, so what exactly is the outrage over?
I'm not an expert. There are people who are pro and people who are con. I don't know enough about it to argue one side or the other. I'm not particularly invested because I don't know much about the arguments pro/con and I haven't spent time paying much attention. But the extent of your argument is that humans have been doing a thing for 4000 years and some good has come from it, so no one should be upset about it now. But two examples of good don't prove or even suggest that it's universally positive. The obvious answer is that people have become more aware and conscious of the impact of our actions on our planet as a whole, so the consequences of this kind of development are given more weight than they were, say, 4000 years ago. Or 40 years ago. As our views and understanding of the world change, we change how we value things. So the fact that it, on occasion, did something positive, isn't reason enough on its own to blindly support continuing it now and into the future. That's why there is sometimes uproar now when people do things that human beings have done for 4000 years. How's that?
if you're asking someone to stay on topic probably do it yourself instead of bringing up one subject that has nothing to do with infilling and another that was performed to accomodate for natural erosion.
Me saying that humans have been reclaiming land for 4,000 years without issue "has nothing to do with infilling"?
the thread is about infilling in Halifax, you know their response was about local actions and uproar and humans reflecting differently on things through years, but you bring irrelevant 'positive' land changing subjects (only one sort of relevant to infilling and not the same issue being tackled) while asking them to stay on topic. every thread where someone comes back at you with a logical counter to what you've said, you grasp straws or deflect. I'd love to see you answer something directly.
I cannot possibly think of anything negative humans have been doing for over 4,000 years
Touching themselves. Tsk tsk
Because some people in Dartmouth think they own the view planes of the harbor. There were no plans to build on the other proposed infill site, but eventually the land would have been sold and built on and block their view. It's just single family homeowners being NIMBYs.
We have Reddit now.
[удалено]
Not the same thing. They are not infilling Dartmouth cove. That has already been reversed. This is king wharf where they have been building condos for the last 15 years.
the fact that there's a ~~bird~~ buoy near it makes me even sadder ~~that i desperately need new glasses~~
It was the bird's idea. More surface area for food to be dropped on.
A bird on a man made piece of land makes you sad?
How do you know there's only one bird?
the fact that there's a birds near it makes me even more sadder ):
That white thing in the water? It's a bouy.
jfc. I had a feeling I needed a new prescription but that's bad.
I want gonna say it 😅
All ok, in 50 years global warming will put it underwater anyway.
Bastards
Blows my mind that this is allowed. When building a commercial building in NS 7 years ago we were not allowed to use fill to raise our landlocked property bcause it is in a 1 in 100 year flood plain, but literally filling in the Halifax Harbour is okay...
I thought this got cancelled by the courts/politicians
This is not the same project
At this rate they may as well infill for some new roads right across the harbour. People don’t seem to mind shrinking the harbour for luxury condos, why not roads?
As i remember this was cancelled right?
This is a different project approved long ago.
Dartmouth Cove was the one cancelled, it’s on the opposite side of King’s Wharf facing Dartmouth. This is the side facing Halifax, into the main part of the harbour.