Apartments sit empty due to contamination
09/10/2007
by -- Lori Coolican, The StarPhoenix
www.canada.com
Nutana, SK - While thousands of post-secondary students scramble to find a place to live for the coming school year, a 17-unit apartment building sits totally vacant in the heart of Nutana, not far from the university campus.
The reason? A gas leak from a nearby Esso station that happened almost 20 years ago.
Formerly known as the Burnlea Apartments, the two-storey building at 920 Ninth St. East became the property of Devon Estates -- a subsidiary of Imperial Oil -- in 2004, shortly before all of its tenants were evicted. It's been empty ever since.
Saskatchewan Environment and Resource Management (SERM) was notified in 2001 of "off-site impacts" related to a 1988 underground gas leak from the Esso station at Clarence Avenue and Eighth Street, and subsequently instructed Imperial Oil to do a site assessment and remediation, said SERM spokesperson Wes Kotyk, an environmental engineer.
"The contamination on site actually exceeded residential criteria," he explained.
"Because it was exceeded, Imperial Oil had this liability associated with it, and they decided they're better off purchasing the property and giving the residents notice, because there is a potential liability if they allow people to live there."
The building's former owner, Richard Visvanathan, didn't learn about the contamination until 2001, when he tried to sell it and the bank would not clear the sale without a clean bill of health from SERM. Visvanathan could not be reached for comment.
"What happened was the remediation was never fully achieved, so there were a number of subsequent site assessments and remedial activities that took place over the years. They probably did about three or four different assessments and soil excavations and sampling events . . . and then the last report we have is dated 2006," Kotyk said.
"Every project they did, they achieved a little bit better cleanup. What we have to do now is we have to review the file in its entirety to see if they've achieved complete cleanup. And then once we do that, if we determine that it's clean, then . . . anybody would be able to buy the property and know that it's been remediated."
The timeline to complete that process "depends on the nature of the priority," Kotyk said. "I mean, if there was a pending land sale we would likely move it to the top of our priority list."
As it stands right now, there is no risk to human health because the building is vacant, he noted.
In the years after the gas leak, Imperial Oil also purchased a four-plex that used to stand next door to the apartment building, at the southwest corner of Clarence Avenue and Ninth Street East. The company eventually demolished the four-plex in order to get at the contaminated soil beneath it. The site is now a vacant lot.
In a recent interview, Imperial Oil spokesperson Pius Rolheiser said the company is satisfied -- based on its own internal criteria -- that the apartment building is no longer affected by the old gas leak, although the provincial authorities have not confirmed that assessment.
The property attracted "some pretty strong expressions of interest" when the company started looking for buyers back in March, he said.
"We are currently working with a couple of prospective purchasers."
lcoolican@sp.canwest.com
(Source: Canada.com, September 1, 2007, www.canada.com)
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