The former owners of the area known as the greenfield site on the Sydney waterfront say there are concerns the dredged material from the harbour might interfere with the construction of a proposed container terminal.

Part of the disposal area for the material is on the greenfield site, an area meant to accommodate a possible container terminal.

Earlier this year, the Cape Breton Regional Municipality was chosen as the successful bidder for the greenfield site and bought it from Laurentian Energy Corp. — a group of businesspeople who own property in the Sydney area.

Jim Kehoe, the president of Laurentian Energy Corp., said there are ponds of water forming in the dredged material because of the size of the barriers.

"Somebody made a huge mistake and the problem was the berms were probably made twice as big as they should have and they didn't have enough fill from the dredging operation to fill them in," said Kehoe.

He believes with ponds forming on the site, the container terminal can't be built without spending millions of dollars.

"I'm talking $10 million and that's just a guesstimate. It could be even more than that," said Kehoe. "That is going to interfere with the development because there's $10 million of money that's got to be found somewhere."

The Cape Breton Regional Municipality bought the greenfield site from Kehoe's group back in the spring for $6 million.

The Sydney Harbour was dredged in the hopes of attracting new post-Panamax container ships — which cannot fit in many harbours — and lead to the construction of large-scale container terminal. That, in turn, would create hundreds of new jobs for the area.