CALEDONIA—When work began in August of last year, contractors for Caledonia’s upcoming Fire and EMS Station made a discovery: despite archeological, environmental, and geotechnical studies giving the green light for construction, the site contained the remnants of a former subdivision. The seven buried home foundations and portions of old roads contaminated the site and required extensive and costly remediation work.
This leads to the question: how did this oversight happen, and who is ultimately responsible for it?
“It’s not a great report to be bringing back. It was a surprise to us, and I don’t like these coming forward, but as far as we can tell, with the information we had at the time of the purchase, this should have been known but it wasn’t,” said Engineering and Capital Works Manager Tyson Haedrich.
The land purchase was made in July 2018. According to a County report, while a geotechnical investigation, with four boreholes drilled on the site, and stage 1-2 of the archaeological assessment were completed, at some point in the process conditions were waived in order to expedite the sale.
“What appears to us is that the conditions were waived without all the work being completed. The geo-technical work was done, the archaeological work was done, there was some work done on the phase 1 environmental assessment that indicated there was possible contamination on the site. That report said a phase 2 should be done to really investigate what was going on,” explained Haedrich.
That assessment indicated that the property was developed for residential use in the early 1950s, with the buildings demolished “sometime after 1973.”
It also identified “four areas of potential environmental concern” with the site, recommending a second phase of study that did not happen prior to the County purchasing the land.
County CAO Cathy Case commented, “Typically, any sale we do at the County, we put conditions in and we have a time frame that the seller will allow us to meet those conditions. At that time, the buyer can waive the conditions if they’re satisfied with what they’re looking in to.”
Case noted that with the initial assessment suggesting further study, staff would normally “go to the realtor or other party and would negotiate an extension so we can look into it further.”
She continued, “In this case … and its partially speculation because the records are not excellent … there was some pressure to continue with the sale because there was a limited number of properties available in Caledonia and because of the geo-technical not coming up with anything significant.”
With the remediation work clocking in at a hefty $1.3 million, it’s a mistake the County is hoping they don’t make again.
“We can’t fix what we can’t fix now, but there’s got to be checks and balances, even at the CAO level. Somebody has to sign off to remove the conditions. We’re not talking a $5,000 sale here, so let’s make sure we’ve got some checks and balances here going forward,” said Ward 5 Councillor Rob Shirton.
In addition to a collapsed basement, some contaminants found on the site include led paint, asbestos, and septic tanks.
Haedrich said the contractor and County worked together through the remediation process to streamline the work and lower the costs where possible, noting that trucks were able to haul some of the removed materials to Hagersville and be loaded up there with clean gravel for the site, but “the costs were high to do this.”
Councillor Stew Patterson questioned the initial geotechnical study: “The building is almost 16,000 square feet. Is four bored holes the minimum? … Should that not have been double? It seems very minimal what was done.”
Haedrich replied, “They drilled four boreholes in the corner where the building would be and they all came back exactly the same, showing native clay soil starting just below a little layer of fill on top. Your natural inclination would be to say the site’s fine…. In retrospect, maybe another two holes…. It was this funny situation, just coincidence, that those four boreholes just happened to miss either the old roads or the old buildings.”
Mayor Shelley Ann Bentley prodded, “2018 wasn’t that long ago. How do we not know what happened? Do we not keep records past a certain time?”
Haedrich answered, “The records that are available for this are very limited. The number of people involved in the sale were very limited. I would say it didn’t go through the normal list of people that would have looked at it at the time. We have gone to the consultant as well. They have fairly good records, but none of the staff that were involved in this project are there either.… My guess would be that some of the conversations would have taken place over the phone and weren’t recorded.”
He noted that following the discovery, County staff reached out to both the original seller and their insurance company to cover a portion of the costs, but came up empty.
Councillor Dan Lawrence pushed back, asking the County to speak to their solicitor, noting, “There’s not a lot of time limits on what you can go back on people for if they don’t disclose.”
Case noted that while staff could have the discussion with the County’s solicitor, “I would be surprised if there is (anything to be done) because we signed off willingly.”
Despite the costly remediation bill, to be covered by Haldimand taxpayers, Lawrence concluded, “It is a good location, I will say that.”
Remediation work on the site has been completed, with construction underway.
Site servicing, the building’s foundations, and the north retaining wall are complete. Construction remains scheduled to finish this year.
