2017 Award of Merit: Benefiting Communities - Returning a Boreal Forest

 

TCS is proud to be part of the team that has been awarded an Award of Merit for boreal forest restoration on a former land treament facility.

 

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Firm:     Tetra Tech
Client: Newalta Corporation
Location: Drayton Valley, Alberta
Sub Consultants: Aquaterra Environmental Consulting Inc.; Tannas Conservation Services Ltd.; Saskatchewan Research Council; Woodlands North Inc.; Access Laboratories Inc.

 

Tetra Tech worked with Newalta to design a safe and cost-effective closure approach for a former oilfield waste land treatment facility located south of Drayton Valley, Alberta. Preliminary estimates to remediate the site to the generic Tier 1 criteria using traditional ‘dig and dump’ methods exceeded $100 million. Traditional remediation was deemed to be unrealistic, a poor use of topsoil resources and did not present an overall benefit to society. Alternatively, a risk-based approach was adopted to evaluate potential human and ecological health risks and ultimately identified that a boreal forest conservation area was the most valuable end land use.