HELP International

HELP's current initiative involves the intensive planting of trees and grasses at the crown and base of landfills and along streams and flood plains which, upon detailed assessment, are determined to receive harmful leachates from the landfill. A second priority is the decontamination and protection of soils surrounding oxidation ponds.

The project also applies phytoremediation technology to industrial waste sites which indicate contaminant content with a high potential for phytoremediation such as crude oil and refined fuels.

Phytoremediation refers to a process that uses plants to remove, transfer, stabilize, or destroy contaminants in soil and sediment. The mechanisms of phytoremediation include enhanced rhyzosphere biodegradation, phyto-extraction (also called phyto-accumulation), phyto-degradation, and phyto-stabilization.

Background to the Phytoremediation Project
The Souris River and Farm Protection Program

This project's design began in 1998 and pilot implementation in year 2000. It focuses on river margin protection. The Souris River and Farm Protection Project, whose principal funder was Eco-Action met with astounding success in its two-year pilot placing 80 kilometers of previously cultivated stream margins under tree and/or permanent grass protection with the planting of almost 90,000 indigenous trees and 2550 acres of grass working with 51 land owners. The project continues with strong support from a diversity of environmental agencies, private foundations, corporations, school and community volunteers and, most importantly, core support from land owners themselves.

The above mentioned project shares the following principal objective with the phytoremediation project: To address the sources of watershed contamination through non-political, user-friendly and environmentally-friendly approaches. Other objectives shared by the two programs include:

HELP International will introduce a model for public education, contamination risk assessment and intensive phytoremediation work at landfills, sewage treatment ponds and other contaminated waste sites in South East Saskatchewan. HELP, supported by a number of environmental agencies, municipal governments and schools, will provide an equivalent amount of inputs. The project will work with ten cities, towns and rural municipalities in the Weyburn-Estevan region to pilot the project which will create a model for the introduction of environmentally-friendly and efficacious decontamination and containment strategies for waste sites on the prairies.