Excess soil from construction sites in Vancouver has been offloaded at a new barge landing and deposited on a property located across Sechelt Inlet from the Skookumchuck Rapids public viewing points. Egmont area resident Kal Helyar told Coast Reporter he first witnessed a shipment being delivered Aug. 18.
Peter Reid of Global Remediation Technology (GRT), a consultant working for the property’s owner, said in an interview that the soil is being used to level off areas on private property near Earle Creek. He said the site is being prepared for future use. He confirmed that about 12,000 tonnes of material, or about five barge loads, have been delivered to the site and that more is scheduled to arrive.
“We are bringing in clean soil to help the owner improve areas of their property,” Reid, an environmental engineer, wrote in an email. He said his client is working with Lafarge to obtain permission to start reclaiming parts of their mine in the area that the company is finished mining. Pending approval under the Mines Act, the private property would be used as a receiving point for materials destined for mine reclamation.
Some of the soil already deposited was excavated from the new St. Paul’s Hospital site, behind Vancouver’s Pacific Central train station. Tony McCadden, of Jacob Bros. Construction, a contractor on that project, confirmed via email that excavated material leaving that site was tested and classified under provincial Contaminated Sites Regulations before “being transported by barge and disposed of at the GRT facility at Earle Creek.”
“Tests are done for metals, hydrocarbons and everything else. As the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) does not have a soil deposit permit process that sets standards, the tests were run out of an abundance of caution to make sure that there was nothing there,” said Reid.
SCRD chair Lori Pratt said she was not aware of the developments at the property when contacted by the Coast Reporter on Aug. 23. Communications manager Aidan Buckley wrote in an email that SCRD infrastructure services and planning departments do not have any background on the activity.
Resident concerns
Importing of soil and the future of the site are of concern for some Egmont area residents, including Helyar. “The barge terminal just went up, poof, in a big, big hurry and nothing was ever said to area residents,” Helyar said.
He expressed concerns about the lack of information as well as the impacts of development at the site for the community and its tourism sector. Shoreline areas on both sides of Sechelt Inlet near the rapids are included in Skookumchuck Narrows and Sechelt Inlets Marine Provincial Parks. Helyar said, “This should set off bells and whistles with people all over the place.”
Speaking with Coast Reporter, Jill Truscott, manager of communications with Lafarge, said its nearby aggregate mine is not currently involved with the work. Lafarge is aware that some area residents are worried about what is going on, she added.
In an email on Aug. 25, Truscott wrote, “Remediation and soil management are a key part of our operations, as well as collaboration with neighbours and landowners. However, our policies have always stated that we must obtain approvals from the BC Ministry of Mines with full permitting before any soils are transferred – and the approval process generally takes 12 months to complete. Our Vancouver operations maintain clean fill sites within the Lower Mainland, and we do not currently export soils as a part of site reclamation. At this stage, we have not obtained any approvals to transfer soils to Earle Creek, and we have not begun the application process yet.”
Reid estimated that the delivery of soil for use on his client’s property will be continuing for a number of months and if use of excess soils for mine reclamation is approved, that work could continue for “a number of years”.
“We’re trying to take soil that is clean and excess from construction projects in Vancouver, find a good place for it to go to create something in the future that will be useful…There are several old mines now in B.C. being reclaimed this way.”
