A large piece of commercial land located at the corner of Main Street and 49th Avenue in Innisfail has seen work crews on site for more than a week.
“It is an environmental cleanup,” said Mark McPherson, environmental scientist with SNC-Lavalin and field supervisor for the cleanup project. “It's going to include excavations of soils on site.”
Work and preparation for the remedial excavation began in early July and is expected to last several weeks, finishing near the end of July.
“I'm here as a representative of Shell to oversee the work and do the environmental testing for the work,” he said, noting about six to eight personnel on site working in different capacities. “We have some geotechnical guys working on the stability of the soils over there. We will be excavating that (area) and we want to know (about soil stability). That's why they are doing an analysis on it.”
McPherson pointed to a mobile lab on site to conduct the soil testing.
“Shell and SNC-Lavalin are really focused on safety. We try and identify hazards, mitigate them and control them as much as possible,” explained McPherson.
The owner of the commercial property, Muhammed Sattar, said he bought the land several years ago and a cleanup was completed at that time. He now wishes to sell the commercial plot and is doing a final environmental cleanup prior to the sale.
“They're going to dig out the old soil and put in new soil. It is vacant land and now it is ready to build on,” said Sattar.
There were plans to possibly develop the land several years ago he noted, but a partnership he had fell through.
“I am not going to build anything now, but I am going to sell it as is,” said Sattar, noting the benefit for interested parties wishing to purchase the land. “They don't need to dig. We can get (the land) ready for them.”
Several people across the province, including here in Innisfail, have shown interest in the commercial property said Sattar.
