During a recent capital planning session, Sundre council voted not to include spending an estimated $450,000 on purchasing and demolishing the old Mountain View County shop in town, in upcoming budget deliberations.
Town of Sundre officials recently offered the county $1 for the shop, which is located on 1st Avenue beside the Elks Hall. The site is contaminated and is costing the county thousands of dollars to clean up, according to officials.
During a capital planning session held on Oct. 14, town officials proposed spending an estimated $400,000 next year on purchasing the building, as well as the recycling centre, from the county.
Officials also proposed to demolish the building at an estimated cost of $50,000, and move the recycling yard to another location, which has not been determined.
Town officials say the shop is a major eyesore to tourists visiting Greenwood Campground and the Sundre Museum, and it doesn't complement the Corridor Enhancement Downtown Revitalization project.
They have received complaints of the shop being unsightly for some time. It has sat vacant for years, at least since the new county shop opened in town in 2008.
County council declined the $1 offer from town officials because they wanted to have the shop appraised and find out its market value before selling it.
“The town sent us a letter on July 22 offering to buy the shop for $1 and they would assume all environmental remediation costs based on the type of future use,” said Ron Baker, director of operational services for the county.
He said county officials have received the appraisal and it will be presented to county council at a future meeting.
In June of 2011, John Olsen of MWH Canada presented to Sundre council after investigating the site.
It was reported that underground storage tanks for gasoline and diesel were removed from the site about 15 years prior to that, after many years of use by the county.
MWH gathered soil and groundwater samples from 16 boreholes and 12 monitoring wells at the site to gauge gasoline and diesel impacts on soil and groundwater.
The investigation found ethylbenzene, xylene, toluene and benzene levels at the site that exceed Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development guidelines.
Baker said MWH Canada officials have been working on cleaning up the site for the past five years.
“We are doing an in situ treatment. So what you do is you inject chemicals into the ground, a peroxide sort of based chemical, and then we retrieve it,” he said.
“There's monitoring wells and it's showing that the contamination is staying there. It's not migrating.”
