Beeland Co-op Fills In Site

FTLComm - Tisdale - Thursday, June 7, 2001

The Chairman of the Beeland Co-op explained Wednesday that the Co-op was taking the responsible route and was voluntarily cleaning up this site. They had conducted extensive soil testing and knew the approximate area that held the contamination and as it turned out they actually removed almost twice the volume of material. With fuel as inexpensive as it was years ago bulk fuel was loaded onto rail cars and only measured as it was pumped into the bulk plant's storage tanks. If a few gallons were lost in the pipeline from the tracks to storage it was not noticed. The project saw the entire area contaminated dug up and the layer of soil saturated with leaked fuel was hauled away. On Wednesday the process of refilling the site was well under way. The only area left untouched was the thin line beside the roadway that has buried fibre optics cable that handles telecommunications for this whole portion of the province. The fill is coming from a borrow pit created South of town and the area under the roadway is being packed to road specifications. This has been a big project and the Co-op and its board deserve full credit for the foresight and environmental responsibility to clean up this site.