Nicholas Lato is a youngish father.

He has a child at Prince of Wales School and is concerned about the impending demolition of buildings at General Electric Vernova, just a stone’s throw from the school and not that far from his home on Frederick Avenue.

He is not a man to mince words. At least he wasn’t when he spoke to council last Monday about its recent decision to reverse an earlier decision to apply heritage designations to four buildings on the site leased by BWXT Nuclear Energy.

Coun. Lesley Parnell reminded him that a decision had been made on removing the designations.

“Yes, and you screwed up,” Lato shot back. “And you need to fix it. You need to figure out what levers you still have after you gave it away.”

Between Monday night’s council meeting and the general committee meeting a week before, council spent roughly four hours deciding it had few if any levers to do much but monitor what happens down at GE.

The environmental concerns raised by GE’s decision to demolish most of its buildings are legitimate. They may sit on the most contaminated piece of property in the province — certainly in Peterborough. A lot of that contamination stands in danger of being stirred up and disseminated when demolition proceeds.

Some on council want the city to have a say as to what happens.

But they have been told there is only so much the city can do. Council can’t, for example, do anything that could be construed as interfering with the independence of the Chief Building Official, who must — under the Ontario Building Code — sign off (or not) on GE’s demolition plans.

That apparently includes disclosing what those plans are to council.

Coun. Joy Lachica, having consulted a lawyer from the Canadian Environmental Law Association, moved a motion — with significant “whereases” — regarding methodology and legal requirements, to do just that.

It lost 3-8, with only councillors Alex Bierk and Keith Riel in support.

Bierk then took a simpler approach.

He was unhappy with a staff report council requested on a health and safety plan for the site and the broader implications of GE’s plans for the surrounding residents.

“The question is what is the city going to do to protect residents from the unwanted impacts of this site,” he said.

“What has come back (instead) is just a restatement of the jurisdictional limits we have already debated.”

Bierk said staff should report back with any available information regarding the extent of contamination on or around the GE site.

“I’m not certain we have any information,” replied infrastructure commissioner Blair Nelson. “We would have to hire an outside consultant if testing is required.”

OK, why not? Consultants have been hired for other things, such as pickleball courts.

Anyway, Bierk was not asking to hire a consultant. He was asking for “available knowledge.”

Finally, he moved a motion which read, in part, “that staff be directed to report back to council with a plan to provide public transparency, to the city’s best available knowledge, regarding the level and extent of environmental contamination in and around the GE site.”

It lost 4-7, councillors Matt Crowley, Bierk, Lachica and Riel in support.

If the city still held heritage designations on the BWXT buildings, it might have a bargaining chip, or “lever” in all of this.

I suspect it is what my Uncle Jack, who knew something about gambling, would have done.

© Peterborough Examiner