City to spend almost $30,000 on oil assessment
The city will spend $29,000 looking at how to clean up an oil-contaminated area just 25 metres from McIntyre Creek.
The city will spend $29,000 looking at how to clean up an oil-contaminated area just 25 metres from McIntyre Creek.
Council approved changes to its 2016 capital budget to allow for the assessment at its meeting last Tuesday night.
The oil was discovered in March by city staff who were working on a water main near the McIntyre Creek pumphouse.
The oil sheen showed up about 1.5 metres below the ground.
Associated Environmental staff came out to the site shortly after the oil was discovered. They took a sample of the groundwater, which indicated hydrocarbon contamination is present.
Associated Environmental also recommended in its report a more thorough assessment of the entire property, which will include looking at risks to the creek by determining the extent of contamination along with the direction and flow of the groundwater.
“The scope of work would include drilling and installing four monitoring wells to a maximum depth of 2.5 m for routine hydrocarbon sampling and water level monitoring,” it’s noted.
“The data obtained will assist in developing options for a suitable course of action.”
The assessment is estimated to take six weeks to complete.
Breaking down the costs, consulting fees and materials make up the bulk of the spending at $20,650.
Drilling, staff time and monitoring of the well installations could cost a further $7,000, with the disposal of contaminated water expected to cost a further $800.
Well monuments are estimated to cost the final $550.
The funding has been approved to come from the city’s water and sewer reserve. However, officials have also said they’re looking at applying to other funding sources such as the federal government’s new clean water fund to help offset some of the costs.
This is not the first time the city has been faced with cleaning up oil in that area.
In 1996, a 1,125-litre (250-gallon) fuel tank of diesel spilled north of the old pumphouse that was in the same general area.
Then, in 2004, there was another diesel spill from what is believed to be an overfilled diesel tank on the north side of the new pumphouse.
Six years later, city crews were doing trenching work for a new communications line when they found contaminated soil once again on the north side of the pumphouse.
“Test results from samples taken after remediation work was completed confirmed that all contaminated soil was removed,” it was stated in an earlier report to council.
The most recent discovery of hydrocarbon in the soil is not in the same location as the 2010 find of contaminated soil.
Comments (8)
Up 0 Down 0
Joey Manvilly on Jun 4, 2016 at 1:06 pm
This is very minor but should be dealt with.
The city does not seem to care that much about the new parks otherwise it would undertake park planning for all these new parks before any trails are designated. And there are many other areas like this one which should be cleaned up.
Seems like there are higher level park planning objectives but poor planning before the city gets to the new parks.
And what about mining activities in one of the new city parks?
Up 3 Down 0
yukon 56 on Jun 3, 2016 at 3:58 pm
You dig till the monitor does not detect any hydrocarbons, the contaminated soil is then spread on a membrane and turned till again no hydrocarbons are detected pretty simple.
Up 4 Down 0
ProScience Greenie on Jun 1, 2016 at 7:02 pm
We burn up too much money on consultants sometimes BnR when less could be spent simply going in with a big track hoe and trucks digging it up and back filling with clean material. The spill is actually not that big and this is mostly about optics and liability fears which wastes money and resources that could be spent cleaning up some of the very real messes that are out there. With some background in remediation I am frustrated with this trend of too much study and not enough action.
Up 2 Down 0
Butchie on Jun 1, 2016 at 6:25 pm
@greenie : I don't agree with most of your diatribe but, you are 100 % with this analysis.
Up 4 Down 3
BnR on Jun 1, 2016 at 2:42 pm
PSG and JC, you guys obviously don't have any idea of what's involved with respect to fuel oil spill remediation. This is not an insignificant spill and the cleanup costs to reach a level where the gov will sign off on it could well be into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, so $20 K or so spent now seems prudent.
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ProEnvironment on May 31, 2016 at 4:04 pm
What an insightful comment jc! Let’s just give 12 random people shovels and make the problem go away. Where should we wheel barrel the contaminated soil? Should we collect any samples or do we just guess when we are done? Should we assess for the presence of groundwater contamination that could potentially impact water quality in the creek or just hope everything is ok? Is all of this covered by your horde of shovel wielding labourers? It may not be rocket science, but it’s a lot more complex than just digging a hole and you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
I think the saddest part of this affair is that Council had to approve a response to an environmental problem that they created, like doing nothing was a possibility.
Up 21 Down 4
jc on May 30, 2016 at 9:27 pm
$29,000 for a study on how to clean up a small oil mess. After all these years of oil spills and the governments still have to spend hordes of money on how to clean them up. And these are the intellectuals we vote into office. Disgusting. Hire a dozen people, arm them with shovels and a wheel barrel and get the job done before the weekend. We're only talking about 7 feet. I dug sample holes prospecting for gold years ago deeper than that. I mean, it's not rocket science.
Up 18 Down 5
ProScience Greenie on May 30, 2016 at 8:42 pm
$30K buys a lot of cat and hoe time but we feed that tax money to consultants instead. It's the Whitehorse way it seems.