The city administrators who have overseen the massive Riel Recreation Park redevelopment compare it to renovating an older home without blueprints or moving out the tenants, and with plenty of surprises.
The landfill remediation and recreation project has spanned years and resulted in several cost overruns. The first phase was originally budgeted at $9.5 million, became $10.7 million, ballooned to $12.8 million and finally, $14.5 million.
The second phase, still under way, started at $6.2 million before an escalation this June to $8.5 million. That prompted council to strike a committee and freeze funding for the next two phases until a report comes back on Sept. 27.
With overruns on phase one and two already on the books and three more phases left to complete, the entire project is expected to cost more than $30 million.
Buried in the ground
Prior to 1976 St. Albert's sewage did not flow into a regional sewer line, it was instead sent to large sewage lagoons along the Sturgeon River.
Riel Pond was to be the third lagoon and is about the same size as the other two that were used. The first two lagoons are buried, one under the soccer and rugby fields and the other under the newly constructed sports field, Kinsmen RV Park and parts of the rodeo grounds.
The lagoons became unnecessary after the city joined the regional waste commission; they were turned into landfills for dry construction waste.
The landfills were closed in the early 1980s and capped with dirt before the recreation facilities were built on top.
The site was also home to another dump or nuisance ground, which dated back to the 1940s and included all kinds of other waste, like cars and more construction debris.
Problems arise
Concerns about the site go back to the early 1990s and dozens of boreholes were drilled, as part of several environmental studies, all of which found no major cause for alarm.
Starting in 2004 that changed. The environmental assessments needed for Ray Gibbon Drive required input from Environment Canada, which expressed concerns about the landfill.
Then pools of leachate, a liquid created when rainwater runoff mixes with landfill waste, were found near the Sturgeon River, prompting Environment Canada to issue an order to fix the problem.
Leah Jackson, the city's environmental manager, said either the city had to voluntarily develop a plan or the federal government would have forced them to do it.
"They can say okay, you are doing your best and keep going or they can say you are not doing your best and we are going to charge you."
A 2005 report identified options, ranging from complete removal of the landfill material, to a leachate collection system, to the process the city elected to use, to cap and grade the site.
Tearing up the site to add a thick clay cap created new problems, however, because there were so many community groups using the area's sports facilities.
"The easiest thing to do would be to just wipe them all out and then remediate the land," said recreation director Monique St. Louis.
Going that route would have been difficult, because there was nowhere to put the community groups at the time. The vast open spaces of the annexed lands were still part of Sturgeon County at the time and there was virtually no land in the city that would have accommodated rugby, soccer and the rodeo.
"We would have wiped out all of these guys, removed all of these services from the citizens of St. Albert, or gone looking for chunks of land," said St. Louis.
Getting into the ground
The leachate was the first sign that the landfill hadn't been controlled as strictly as it should have been.
Tracy Allen, manager of capital projects who has overseen the whole project, said when they started to get into the ground there were many surprises.
"We have found the occasional things that shouldn't have been there like car batteries. We found some asbestos pipes, things that shouldn't have been there."
The city had taken borehole samples, testing to see what was underneath and the strength of the existing clay, but that didn't add up with what construction crews found.
The initial boreholes along Rodeo Drive, Allen said, made it seem as though the road had been built on one of the berms separating the initial lagoons. But that wasn't the case, as crews found a large pocket of waste in pretty much every location except where the bore samples were drilled.
"It would be like you would have a pocket of good clean clay fill and then next would be a pocket of waste," Allen said.
She attributes 50 per cent of the phase one cost overruns to the surprises under Rodeo Drive.
The other half was from the discovery of methane gas. Construction landfills are not supposed to give off methane because only organic materials produce it, Allen said.
On the advice of a consultant the city decided to take a look just in case. They found isolated and varying pockets of the gas all over the site.
"Literally, you can dig one hole and find nothing and three feet later find high levels of methane," Allen said.
The design of the drainage layer under the football field had to be changed to allow water to flow down, but methane to flow up.
Allen said cellphones had to banned from the site during construction and work frequently had to be shut down when the gas was detected.
Similar problems have emerged in the second phase.
"There is a premium for that because your contractor can't work for 20 minutes while we are waiting for the methane to dissipate," Allen said.
On top of all those challenges the city was also tendering in a very hot construction market.
During phase two, which covers the rodeo grounds, BMX track and Rotary Park, crews ran into many of the same problems.
"The clay that was brought in for the BMX track wasn't necessarily suitable for capping and the areas where there should have been a lot [more clay] there wasn't," said Allen.
The cost of clay is a major part of the project since it rises to two metres thick in some places. Adding more clay than expected adds cost.
"There are very specific parameters for clay and if you can't find it locally then you have to go looking for it and potentially pay more for trucking."
The city knew about the high-pressure gas lines running through the site, but Allen said as more clay was added they had to start worrying about the weight and the possibility it would put too much pressure on the lines.
For the next two phases, which include the rugby and soccer fields, the city has been able to do much more testing and Allen said she hopes they will see fewer surprises underground.
"We have just finished wrapping up the comprehensive geotechnical report so it would rule out surprises like the BMX surprise."
Mayor Nolan Crouse said the concern about the project has always been there.
"You see the vision of where we are going, with the rodeo and BMX and all the phases, but even back then there was this uneasiness of the costs and the uncertainty," he said. "Every million dollars that we spend, there is a million dollars we can spend elsewhere."
Crouse said he understands the need to remediate the site, but is also concerned about the costs. He would like more help from the federal government on the project, which he notes has been involved in other environmental clean-ups, yet in this case the city has been largely on its own.
"We are caught between this regulatory direction and a practical solution," he said. "We are wearing the ills of 40, 50, 60 years ago."
