Town hall construction delayed by soil contamination, storm water upgrades

By Sean Feagan, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Construction of the new municipal building has been complicated by contaminated soil and degraded stormwater drainage – but fixing those issues may result in a healthier Kinsmen Lake.
Construction of the Strathmore Municipal Building, which the town broke ground on Sept. 6, 2019, has been ongoing throughout the winter, despite a few bumps along the way. Work was slowed due to some unforeseen circumstances – namely contaminated soil and blocked storm water pipes – that have now been rectified, said Strathmore Mayor Pat Fule.
“We’ve had to replace a lot of infrastructure, which has impacted the speed of construction and costs,” he said. “There was a bit of a slowdown while we got a handle on it, but it is progressing really well now, and we think we can get back on track.”
When construction personnel excavated the parking lot to install the piles for the new building in late 2019, soil samples that were collected on site were later assessed and were shown to contain chemical contaminants, said Fule.
“They’ve been finding a lot of chemicals, including benzenes and some heavy oils – it turned out to be more contaminated than we thought,” said Fule. “I’ve heard form a lot of people who have been (in Strathmore) for a long time, that a lot of people used to dump stuff there.”
The town was required to remove the contaminated soil off-site, in accordance with provincial environmental best practices.
“We had to truck a lot of it away to Calgary for proper disposal,” noted Fule.
The excavations also uncovered that a major stormwater transmission pipe beneath the building site and Park Lane Drive was penetrated and blocked by tree roots, causing it to crack and burst.
“The stormwater was flowing on either side of the pipe, but not in the pipe anymore,” said Fule. “So that means any kind of run off or chemicals that might have entered the stormwater, was leaking into the ground and getting into the lake.”
To correct this issue, the old pipe was repaired and rerouted, and a new one was installed – an effort that could result in better conditions in the lake for residents, said Fule.
“We feel that even though we are a bit behind schedule – and we are monitoring costs – we feel that we have improved the water quality,” he said. “The water is not going to be running alongside pipes and picking up contamination from the soil around it, and then going into Kinsmen.”
Conditions within Kinsmen Lake, which is a component of Strathmore’s stormwater drainage system, will also be improved thanks to an effort to remove sediment from the lake, noted Fule.
“In the fall, we brought in a company to hydrovac the north third or quarter of the lake, because there was a lot of sediment at the bottom,” he said. “We wanted to improve the water quality, so that sediment and silt was hydrovac’d and also trucked away.”
By requiring work that may improve the water quality of Kinsmen Lake, the new municipal building might not improve only Strathmore’s look, but also its smell, stressed Fule. Improved water quality “is going to make for a better lake – and hopefully there will be less odours that sometimes happen,” he said.