Port Lands - Industry

Industry

The Port Lands are mostly abandoned from the days of heavy industry. The Toronto Port Authority operates a container shipping facility and a cruise ship terminal along the eastern shore of the inner harbour, as well as the large Outer Harbour Marina in between the Port Lands and the Leslie Street Spit. The Portlands Energy Centre, a cogeneration power plant, is situated beside the now defunct Richard L. Hearn Generating Station. The Hearn Generating Station smokestack (215 metres (705 ft) in height), together with the Ashbridges Bay sewage sludge incinerator stack and the Commissioners Street waste incinerator stack stand as towering landmarks of a bygone industrial era (All three facilities are no longer in operation).

Energy Innovation Corp. plans to construct a new facility on the Port Lands that will use flaxseeds to make biodiesel. Energy Innovation Corp. CEO Jon Dwyer says the Toronto plant will use flaxseeds from all over southern Ontario to make 10 million litres of biodiesel annually. The expansion is in anticipation of increased demand stemming from Federal legislation that calls for all diesel fuel and heating-oil to contain 2 per cent biodiesel by 2011, which experts predict will drive Canadian demand as high as 600 million litres annually. Canada currently produces 200 million litres a year. Dwyer chose the portlands because: "Being located in cities means being closer to customers; from waste management companies like the Turtle Island Recycling Plant, to bus transit corporations like Metrolinx, to the City of Toronto itself."