Dear Editor,
Our historical farm between Devon and Calmar, Rd W4-50-26-17-SE that has been in the Bilozer name for 96 years is now destroyed thanks to Imperial Oil, Alberta Environment and The Regional Health Authority.
What used to be good agriculture land is now a contaminated land fill. The water and land is now all contaminated. We could never build a home here and live on our farm. Our family is stuck with this contaminated destroyed farm for life because no bank will ever give a mortgage or loan to anyone if we ever wanted to sell it.
In 1970 Imperial Oil burnt brush in a off lease private land area without testing the soil. The fire ignited the under lying peat moss resulting in a slough.
The land owner at the time, Natala Bilozer, wanted it restored but instead a documented report recently received states the Alberta Environment and Regional Health Authority gave the approval for Imperial Oil to use our farm for a contaminated concrete pit waste disposal site.
They have buried contaminated concrete pump jack pads, various sizes of steel cable covered in black sludge, timber and metal conduit without the knowledge or consent of the landowner at the time, Natala Bilozer.
This is illegal dumping on private off lease land. According to documents we have on this site in 1982 there was a pipeline break that was never cleaned up and another in 1992 that was never reported or cleaned up.
We have stressed many times that we want this all removed and cleaned up. We have had several meetings with Imperial Oil and Alberta Environment over the years but they are all not willing to address our concerns. They just keep saying they need to do more testing to finish the chapter in their book. We believe their book is complete. We have 19 reports from various companies and 41 documents on the Alberta web site ESAR. They have done 101 boreholes 31 test pits and 18 monitoring well on this site alone.
We had a meeting with Minister McQueen in December 2012. She has not yet responded back to us since our meeting. She brushed us off the minute she left that meeting. Obviously she doesn’t care that her department has destroyed our land that is in her Constituency.
We have asked the Alberta Environment and Minister McQueen to enforce Imperial Oil to dig out and clean up this contaminated waste disposal area but they don’t seem willing to do this. We have three letters that Alberta Environment wrote to Imperial Oil over the years requesting them to clean this area up but they have never enforced these letters. They just write these letters to the oil companies but they never enforce them.
It’s about time all parties involved step up to the plate and take responsibility. Quit denying that you never did this and dig out your contaminated waste disposal site.