The clean up of the contaminated land that once was the site of two Cold War bomb shelters in Red Deer County has been completed.
The government paid a Calgary company $850,000 to demolish the The 70,000-square-foot “Diefenbunker” off Hwy 2A and the smaller communications bunker (17,000 square-foot) nearby in 2001.
Built in 1964, the fallout shelters were part of Canada’s network of bunkers to give federal and provincial officials a safe place to go in the event of a nuclear attack. The two underground bunkers were part of the former Canadian Forces Base in Penhold.
Shannon McCourt, regional manager, Public Works and Government Works Canada, said the two properties were demolished as they were found to be contaminated with mold, asbestos and lead. An historical diesel fuel spill was also discovered near the smaller bunker.
McCourt said over the last 11 years there was rehabilitation work including a hazardous material survey, site supervision and the initial environmental site assessment a fluid vapor recovery program and designed a pilot scale, multi-phase extraction system to remove diesel-contaminated groundwater for treatment and remediation following the demolition.
McCourt said monitoring wells were installed and determined that groundwater was impacted.
“Pipes were installed to extract diesel-contaminated water for treatment,” said McCourt. “In total, about 5,000 litres of diesel fuel was collected from the site and approximately 32,000 tonnes of hydrocarbon-contaminated soil was removed.”
MCourt said the landowner was paid $86,000.00 for the loss of his maintenance garage which was demolished to make way for the hydrocarbon-contaminated soil excavation.
All the remediation work has been completed. No further work is scheduled.
At the time of the demolition, there were dozens of ideas for the bomb shelter’s potential use including one from an Innisfail man who wanted to grow medicinal marijuana in the shelter.
Following the closure of CFB Penhold, the two bunkers were sold as surplus assets. The “Diefenbunker” was sold for $312,278 by public tender in 1995 and the smaller communications bunker was sold for $162,000 by public auction in 1994.
The government decided to re-acquire the properties in 1998 following an RCMP investigation into allegations criminals wanted to purchase the bunkers.
The provincial government paid $750,000.00 to buy the larger bunker and $500,000.00 to purchase the smaller communications bunker. The government decided to demolish the shelters because of security risks and the costs to maintain the bunkers.
crhyno@www.reddeeradvocate.com