Town Reclaims Another Site On Main Street

FTLComm - Tisdale - Thursday, April 25, 2002

Montana Properties no longer is the owner of this nice big open lot between Bow Mar Sales Ltd. and Venice House as it is now town property and as such, is being cleaned up. This issue of contaminated sites around Tisdale was first mentioned by Ensign back in December of 1999 when it was referred to as the Valdez in Tisdale. Imperial Oil was not amused with the story and complained to us in a letter. But since then Tisdale has seen these sites cleaned up with two last summer. Beeland Co-op undertook a major project at their old bulk site and had to remove a huge amount of soil along the pipeline that once connected their site with the railway unloading dock. The second project was carried out by the town on the former GT Mechanical site across the street from the town office and this project grew to include almost the entire lot. This project had been attempted once before but when the costs of the clean up appeared to be very high it was decided to close it up and leave the site. But the demand for good business locations in Tisdale remains active and this property is choice commercial property and now is an excellent time to clean up the site and make it available for future development. The smell this morning at 8:30 was definitely indicating that the contamination was rich. The supervising geologist explained that gasoline, because of its viscosity floats on top of the water table. This means that it will travel horizontally underground riding on top of the water but the water prevents it from descending deeper into the ground. In this site the town anticipates the hole being substantially larger than the project last summer. The waste material is being taken to the landfill and the new fill will be brought in from work on the lagoon where a centre dike needs repair and the two projects will work together in providing a source for material needing to be moved at the lagoon. To make sure that the contamination is contained this site will be given a liner before the back fill process begins thus preventing any contamination missed in or near the site from migrating on top of the water table once it returns.