ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT

Date: April 8, 1998

Author/Local: Kolvane Yuh/7125

CC File No: 5102

TO:	Vancouver City Council
FROM:	Manager of Real Estate Services
SUBJECT:	Further environmental soil and groundwater investigation at the City owned former Canron Site

RECOMMENDATION

THAT the budget for Morrow Environmental Consultants Inc's contract be increased as the Manager of Real Estate Services may approve, to carry out further soil and groundwater investigation at the former Canron building site generally in accordance with the proposal attached as Appendix "A", for a maximum additional cost of $60,000 plus GST to be funded by the Property Endowment Fund.

GENERAL MANAGER'S COMMENTS

The General Manager of Corporate Services RECOMMENDS approval of the foregoing.

COUNCIL POLICY

Council approval is required for consultant contracts in excess of $30,000.

PURPOSE

This report seeks Council's approval to increase the budget of an existing contract with Morrow Environmental Consultants Inc. (Morrow) up to a maximum additional cost of $60,000 to carry out required further soil and groundwater investigation at the former Canron building site.

BACKGROUND

On July 26, 1990 Council established a policy that the Southeast Shore of False Creek be a let-go industrial area, and on December 3, 1991 Council resolved that the main land use for the area to be housing. Following these policies, the recent history of the City's actions regarding environmental site assessment on the City owned lands at the Southeast Shore of False Creek is summarized as follows:

May 18, 1993	Council directed Real Estate to carry out environmental site assessment on the City owned lands on the Southeast Shore of False Creek. And Council approved MTR Consultants Ltd.(MTR) as environmental project manager.
February 1, 1994	Council approved Morrow Environmental Consultants Inc. and Envirochem Special Projects Inc. to carry out environmental site assessment on the City lands.
January 17, 1995	Council received the report on the environmental site assessment. The report, in addition to discussion of the contamination found, also identified three hot spots where a potential for contaminated groundwater escaping into False Creek can happen .
April 11, 1995	Council approved MTR and Morrow to carry out further investigation on the three hot spots.
May 28, 1996	Council received the reports on assessment of the hot spots. The reports identified that two hot spots, i.e. the City Works Yard asphalt plant area and former Canron area, should be followed up, and Council approved MTR and Morrow to monitor the situation of the two hot spots.

Since the summer of 1996, MTR and Morrow have been monitoring the asphalt plant area and the former Canron area. Since the first assessment report in 1994/95, the B.C. Ministry of Environment (Ministry) have been kept informed of all reports produced by the City's environmental site investigations. Environment Canada also have the same information through the Ministry.

DISCUSSION

The monitoring carried out in 1996 and 1997 in respect of the asphalt plant area and the former Canron area confirms that groundwater contamination within 30 to 60 feet of False Creek are at levels significantly above Ministry regulations. Due to the short distance to False Creek, a potential exists for contamination to escape into False Creek water through groundwater. However, the consultants' loading calculations of such potential escape indicate that it would not be a significant environmental impact on False Creek. Sampling of False Creek water at the potential escape zones failed to detect the contaminants, and laboratory analysis of the water samples confirms that they were at background False Creek surface water level.

To address the potential pollution at the Canron site and the asphalt plant area, it will be necessary to carry out further assessment to determine the source and remedial options to deal with the soil and groundwater contamination at these two locations expeditiously ahead of a development plan of the sites.

The Ministry has expressed their concern about the potential escape of contamination into False Creek water, and wrote the City on three occasions, i.e. September 18, 1996, July 28, 1997 and December 18, 1997 requiring immediate short-term remediation measures.

Short-term measures will cost the City approximately $500,000 for a two year program on pump-and-treat systems, at the end of which additional significant costs will be required to extend the program, or remediation will be required. It is felt that interim measures will not address the real issue and its cost is not considered effective, given that water samples at the potential discharge zones did not detect the contaminants. Real Estate believe that a meaningful way to address the groundwater issues is to deal with them at the time following decommissioning of the asphalt plant and to implement the present proposal for further work at the Canron site. This course of action would be cost effective and environmentally appropriate as the source of the contamination will be addressed.

Real Estate staff and the City consultants have met several times with Ministry staff, and informed them of our position in writing. A copy of the Ministry's letters and the City's replies are filed with the City Clerk for reference. The City did carry out the work raised by the Ministry that was considered to be cost effective, e.g. cleaning out contamination in catch basins and investigation of drainage/sump systems in relation to ground water on the former Canron site.

The current total budget approved by Council on environmental site assessment from May 18, 1993 is $390,000 plus GST (inclusive of a City Manager authorization of $20,000 on January 13, 1998). The budget has paid for work done in the past five years onenvironmental investigations and monitoring of hot spots on the City Southeast False Creek lands, and is now exhausted except for a small residual budget left in relation to MTR. Out of the total budget, approximately $295,000 was spent on obtaining contamination data on approximately 42 acres of land, and approximately $95,000 spent on investigation and monitoring the hot spots.

Building demolition at the former Canron site is nearly completed, and it is appropriate to proceed at the present time with further environmental site investigation of the site. The purpose is to acquire the necessary scientific data on the particular soil and ground water issue at this hot spot, in order to develop remediation options. The required boreholes and monitoring-wells will be mostly located within the former building footprint, and it was not cost effective to carry out this work until the building demolition is completed.

The work will include drilling approximately 17 boreholes, installation of approximately 16 monitoring wells, soils and ground water sampling, laboratory analysis, land survey and scientific/professional interpretation of the data. The finding should enable us to quantify and delineate the extent of soil containing elevated zinc contamination, and to delineate the dissolved metals plume in ground water. Furthermore, the program will assess impacts on soils and ground water from underground storage tanks which were revealed during the recent building demolition. The work program is based on the consultants' opinion of the main location of the contaminants, from their experience of the site using the scientific site data available. It is possible that the work program may require further step-out boreholes, monitoring wells and sampling at extra cost, if the boundary of the contamination should turn out to be wider than currently estimated.

Morrow has proposed to carry out the work at an estimated cost of $43,000 plus GST. Allowing for a need of their involvement in discussion with the Ministry on the finding in addition to field work, and a contingency, a budget of $60,000 plus GST is appropriate.

MTR will be required to continue to advise the City including discussions with the Ministry on the findings of the proposed further investigation. Since the Council approved budget still has a small residual amount to cover MTR's involvement in this circumstance, no funding is being sought for MTR's costs in this report.

City policy is to select consultants through a tender process. In this case, the retention of Morrow is already the result of a tender process in 1993/94. The scope of work has not changed materially, merely a reasonable extension of it as described in this report. Furthermore, Morrow have acquired in the last five years, direct experience and knowledge of the environmental site issue which is the subject of the proposed investigation, and their direct experience and knowledge of the issue will be considered useful to the City and looked upon favourably in a re-tender situation. Their costs were found to be competitive andsatisfactory by Real Estate in the past five years, and their proposed charge out rates in Appendix "A" are competitive and reasonable. Under this circumstance, the Manager of Real Estate Services recommends that it is more efficient and appropriate to approve a budget increase in the existing Morrow contract to carry out the work described in this report.

Upon completion of the proposed further investigation, the findings and proposed remediation options will be reported back to Council.

As to the asphalt plant area, options of dealing with the ground water issue are being looked at. Based on the current time schedule for the new asphalt plant to be completed end of 1998, it is expected that a report on the matter will be presented to Council sometime in the Fall this year.

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(c) 1998 City of Vancouver