Dozens of properties near Granville Street and West 41st Avenue have been contaminated as a result of a leak emanating from the Shell gas station at that location.
Shell scheduled a private information meeting with affected residential and commercial property owners Monday night at the Arbutus Club.
Seventy-eight properties in the wealthy Westside neighbourhood have been contaminated, including six commercial ones.
Contamination was initially discovered during a rebuild of the gas station in 2006.
The station dates back to the 1930s, according to Shell Canada spokesperson Jeff Gabert.
Its not an unusual occurrence with gas stations. Its unusual to see one [situation] where weve had this many residences, this many properties involved, Gabert told the Courier Monday afternoon.
He said the rebuild required Shell to do environmental baseline testing, which revealed the problem. Owners of affected properties have to be notified based on provincial regulations.
Right now it means they get notified that they have an issueits 60 feet below [ground] in most cases. In the majority of cases its quite deep. Its down at the water level, Gabert explained. Weve been working with the Ministry of Environment all along to delineate what exists there and to find out what the size and the scope is. Thats what we continue to do and weve been updating the neighbours on a regular basis. Thats what this private information sessions isan information session to update them on the progress.
The first properties owners that were affected were notified in 2006 and 2007. The last ones were notified as results came in, Gabert said.
The standards in B.C. are quite strictsome of the most strict that youll find in North America, he said. In this case, its drinking water standards. Nobody, obviously, there has a drinking water well, but should they have a drinking water well, would they be able to drink the water or not?thats the standard. In this case, if you go above the standard, even by a little bit, you have to notify people.
A plan to deal with the contamination problem has yet to be drawn up.
Right now, our focus is trying to figure out how big it is and whats the size and the scope. So thats what were doing, Gabert said. As soon as you have the delineation, thats when you get into talking about what the remediation is and you do that in concert with the Ministry of the Environment. And well obviously be informing the residents as well.
Mairi Welman, director of corporate communications for the City of Vancouver, said a legal representative from the city planned to attend the meeting.
Somebody from our legal team is attending because were impacted like the property owners are. The regulatory scope of this is Ministry of Environment, she said.
A call to the Ministry of Environment was not returned by the Couriers deadline.
noconnor@vancourier.com
Twitter: @Naoibh
