Town of Sundre officials recently offered Mountain View County $1 for the old county shop located on 1st Avenue beside the Elks Hall in Sundre.
The site is contaminated and is costing the county thousands of dollars to clean up, according to officials.
County council declined the offer, stating 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.
“Our council said no to that…it could be for sale in the future, they just didn't want to sell it for $1 because they wanted to see what it was worth first.”
Dave Dubauskas, the town's chief administrative officer, said town officials would like to purchase it so they can remove the shop and use the open space.
“It's a strategic location. It was really ideal in terms of tying that area together for, you know, with the campground there, it's a proximity downtown, the museum,” explained Dubauskas.
“So to get the shop out of there and the recycling centre, getting that out of there would be nice, and then for an interim use, an open space, maybe a market space, farmers market, etc.”
Town officials are aware that it's contaminated land, which is why they only offered $1.
“It was one of those opportunities that came up that said ‘look you know for $1 we'll take on this contaminated land',” he said.
“Based on contaminated land, you can still do a lot with it, whether you use it as a park space or whatever. In terms of residential use and that, that's what contaminated land is not good for.”
Baker said county officials have received the appraisal and it will be presented to county council at a future meeting.
“The town eagerly awaits to find out what the county's findings are,” said Dubauskas.
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.
Olsen presented a plan to clean up the soil and the groundwater at the site, at that time.
As well, in November of 2012, Mountain View County councillors were presented with a remediation project to clean up contaminated groundwater, for a cost of $156,500.
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 and we've done that twice,” he said.
“There's monitoring wells and it's showing that the contamination is staying there. It's not migrating.”
The hydrocarbon contamination is monitored annually, he said.
Dubauskas said if the town did purchase the shop, officials would continue to monitor the site and eventually clean it up completely.
“Because it's already in place, if we purchased it, we'd just let the reclamation process continue,” he said. “And it's looking like, from what I understand, maybe another two to three years.”
Town officials have received complaints about 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, according to Baker.
However, it is still used for storage space, like for some of the county's mowers, he said.
“We store sandbags in there when we're making sandbags for pre-flood stuff. We do up sandbags and shrink-wrap them and put them in there on pallets.”
