The City of Nelson is still a couple of years away from deciding whether it can build a park on its largest piece of vacant lakeshore land.
The city's Official Community Plan envisions the properties at 70 and 80 Lakeside Drive, each about 1.8 hectares in size, as a future park focused around the mouth of Cottonwood Creek.
The properties were used as a landfill until 1982, and then covered over. Now 70 Lakeside Dr. is the location of the Regional District of Central Kootenay recycling bins and is otherwise vacant except for some large piles of sand used by the city's public works department, while 80 Lakeside Dr. is the site of the city's public works offices and yard.
Would the below-ground garbage and industrial waste threaten the health or safety of park users?
The City of Nelson is working through a complex provincial government process to answer that question.
"The overall objective for the 70 Lakeside Dr. property is that we're trying to get a closure of a former landfill and transfer station site," says Colin Innes, the city's director of engineering, capital and special projects.
"But until you actually go through the closure process with (the B.C. environment), it is still considered to be (an active landfill site)."
The closure process involves scientific testing of the earth, water, and air at the site.
The city will be working with the RDCK on this process because the district is responsible for waste and it ran the landfill and transfer station sites. A consultant has been hired to do the technical work.
Innes says the city has spent about $200,000 over the past four years for consultants and for technical processes such as drilling and lab testing.
Digging up and moving the buried garbage is not an option, Innes says, because disturbing the buried materials might break them up and create new "contaminant mobilization" on the site. It would also be very expensive, he said.
Using the land for housing, given the instability of the buried garbage, would be "a difficult geotechnical exercise," he said.
The provincial government requires that the landfill site be closed in three stages: characterization, hazard assessment and a closure plan.
Steps in the process
This characterization stage means describing the state of contamination.
"You need to be able to say, well, this are what the soil condition is, this is what the groundwater condition is, here is what (the overall condition of) the property is," Innes said.
This work includes taking soil samples, groundwater samples, and vapour samples, then having them analyzed in a lab. Innes says this has been happening in stages since 2019.
"You're testing it for hydrocarbons, metals, all of the different things that are in a contaminated site, and looking at regulation and standards, and comparing it against that.
"We're hoping that at the end of this that there won't be any big surprises that we find along the way, and that we'll actually be able to say, 'OK, we've characterized 70 Lakeside Dr. and we've characterized 80 Lakeside Dr.'"
Next, a Human Health and Ecological Risk Assessment (HHERA) must be produced by a specialized consultant "using a lot of data that's derived from toxicologists, and a lot of numbers of different kinds of exposures and exposure pathways."
Innes said he estimates the HHERA will be finished in about a year. The report might decide the work is complete or might ask for further detail.
The assessment will indicate the suitability of various uses of the land.
The final step is the creation of a closure plan, which is a summary document outlining the work that has been done, the risks (or lack thereof) that exist, and the plan for managing any risk.
The completion of the plan signals that the site is no longer an active landfill.
The rail yard
Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC, formerly known as CP Rail), owns a piece of land between the city properties and the tracks. Historically the land contained an extensive rail yard and a repair shop for diesel locomotives. It is now considered a contaminated site because of its history of industrial activity.
The Ministry of the Environment told the Nelson Star that it is working with CPKC on developing a HHERA for the property. Innes said the ministry will have information on the city's and the rail company's plans, and the two will have to be compatible.
Asked for details, and for its plan for the former rail yard property, CKCP declined to provide any information.
Cottonwood Creek
In December 2023, Living Lakes Canada completed a technical report entitled Cottonwood Creek Water and Aquatic Resources Assessment.
The report lists a number of potential threats to the aquatic health of the creek, past and present, including the effects of historical mining and possible groundwater pollution from the former CP Rail works yard.
It explores the history and aquatic health of the watershed, listing the information that would be needed in order to create a watershed management plan for the creek.
This report on Cottonwood Creek is expected to be presented to Nelson City Council in the near future.
