One of BC’s Largest Brownfield Cleanups

Despite the many factors at play against a successful outcome for this project, NEXT Environmental rose to the challenge. Our environmental services were called upon for this cleanup project covering 64 acres of valuable foreshore property that had been long considered “technologically impossible” to remediate. The site had been affected by decades of leaks from a bulk petroleum storage facility and was under a Pollution Abatement Order from the Ministry of Environment.

One of our first accomplishments was demonstrating that a prohibitive $15 M cleanup estimate was incorrect for one portion of the property. This helped reduce financial liability for our client and permitted acquisition of the site, which helped meet tight deadlines for prospective tenants who had to relinquish their leases at other locations.

We not only designed a carefully orchestrated program of serial cell excavations combined with bioremediation, barrier walls, groundwater treatment and risk assessment, we also suspended operations on active railroad tracks, cut the tracks, removed underlying contamination and returned the tracks – all on a Labour Day weekend, and finished our work with one hour to spare before the trains started running again.

In the end, we helped our client recover a substantial portion of remediation costs by proving that remediation was not technologically impossible after all. We also helped them obtain several CoCs from the Ministry of Environment, and the site was successfully re-developed into Harbourside Business Park.

Do you have an environmental challenge that seems impossible to overcome? To get our innovative environmental services working for you, contact us today.