$84 million goes to work at former Expo 86 location, B.C. remediation report says
Neal Hall
Sun
PRIORITY CONTAMINATED SITES: British Columbia’s contaminated Crown land cleanup includes urban industrial sites in Greater Vancouver and as far afield as a pulp mill at Ocean Falls and mine tailings in the West Kootenays. Reclamation workers enter the abandoned Britannia Beach mine. This entry point now has a new purpose — channelling water rushing through the mine to create hydroelectric power. Photograph by : Stuart Davis, Vancouver Sun
The provincial government is spending $187 million to clean up contaminated sites on Crown land, with most of the funding allocated to the Britannia Mine site and the former Expo lands in Vancouver’s False Creek, according to a report released Friday.
B.C. Agriculture and Lands Minister Pat Bell said he thought the release of the first government report on contaminated sites on Crown land was particularly timely during Environment Week.
The work undertaken by the Crown Contaminated Sites Program “exemplifies the premier’s goal to lead the world in sustainable environmental management,” the minister said.
About 94 per cent of B.C. is Crown land, owned by the province, which is responsible for managing and protecting the land and cleaning up the environmental damage mainly caused by industrial use dating back to the 1800s.
Brian Clarke, director of the Crown contaminated sites branch, said in an interview Friday that the government’s 29-page report details the current sites being cleaned up and future sites being identified for cleanup. It is the first time the government has issued a progress report on what is being done, he said.
“It’s a step that we’ve taken to respond to a report by the auditor-general in 2002,” Clarke explained.
He said there are at least 2,000 potentially contaminated sites around the province — mainly old mines — and the branch tries to identify its top-10 sites each year that are worth investigating to see if cleanup is needed.
Clarke said an estimated $99 million will be spent on the old Britannia Mine, 50 kilometres north of Vancouver, and $84 million on the former Expo site, now called Pacific Place.
Before the 82-hectare site hosted the Expo 86 World’s Fair, it had been an industrial site for more than 100 years that included two coal gasification plants and the CPR Railyards.
After the fair, it was sold to Concord Pacific Development Ltd., which built hundreds of condominiums in the last two decades.
Earlier this week, the government celebrated the opening of the Britannia Mine water treatment plant, which removes heavy metals from water draining through the old mine, then discharges the treated water into Howe Sound. The mine closed in 1974. At its peak in 1929, it was the largest copper-producing mine in the British Commonwealth.
Other urban industrial contaminated sites under remediation are Meadow Avenue in Burnaby, on the Fraser River, and the foot of Oak Street in Vancouver.
Other sites under remediation are:
– The Yankee Girl Mine in the Kootenays near Ymir, south of Nelson. Mining for gold, silver, lead, iron, zinc and cadmium began in the 1800s and continued until the 1950s. The Salmo River was cutting away at the tailings (the rock left behind after the valuable minerals are extracted), but the province built an erosion barrier and further work is being done this year to determine what to do with the tailings.
– Malakwa. A former landfill near Sicamous was being exposed by erosion of the Eagle River. Waste material was removed and the riverbank is being replanted with shrubs and undergrowth to stop erosion.
– The former Ocean Falls pulp mill sites on the central coast.
Remediated sites include:
– Goose Bay, an abandoned fishing camp and rundown cannery on the coast 483 kilometres north of Vancouver, underwent a cleanup last year. It was contaminated by a toxic stew of old heating oil, asbestos, PCBs, lead acid batteries and drums containing hazardous materials littering the site.
– The Pitt River, about 72 kilometres outside of Vancouver. An old landfill beside the river was spilling debris in the river. The upper part of the Pitt River is considered a significant salmon spawning stream. Tonnes of debris were removed by barges, and vegetation will be planted this year to stabilize the riverbank.
One of the future projects under investigation is the Gasworks located at 12th Street and Third Avenue in New Westminster, the site of a coal gasification plant in 1897 and later used for bulk coal storage, a metal foundry, paint factory, wood treatment and automobile repair shop.
