Sackville, NB, Bill Johnstone Memorial Park and Fire Hall Brownfield Site Assessment

The Town of Sackville will conduct a site assessment and develop a remedial action plan for the Bill Johnstone Memorial Park site and adjacent fire hall, in order to revitalize the downtown core and create new recreational opportunities for the community. Centrally located on Main Street, the 12,100-square-metre Memorial Park serves as a recreational hub and the site of the town library, and the adjacent 3,237-square-metre fire hall is used by Sackville’s volunteer firefighters. In 2003, the town was advised by the Province of New Brunswick that hydrocarbon vapours detected in the library could pose a human health risk to the community. In the interest of public safety, the town was asked to delineate contamination and, if required, to remediate the park site and adjacent property. Possible sources of contamination include the park site’s history as a municipal dump prior to 1927, and the underground storage tanks removed from the fire hall site in 1989. The site assessment will sample soil and groundwater to delineate the petroleum contamination and to assess whether any contaminants (e.g. petroleum, trace metals) exceed Tier 1 criteria. Depending on the results of the assessment, the remedial action plan will include source removal of contaminated soil and a pump-and-treat approach for contaminated groundwater, and will also consider the feasibility of in situ bioremediation. Once the potential contaminants have been identified and removed, Sackville plans to construct a new energy-efficient recreational facility on the park property. The new facility would be modeled after the recently constructed town hall building, which was built on a former brownfield site with FCM funding support (GMF 10346). This study is also part of a broader initiative identified in the town’s sustainability plan to inventory community brownfield sites with redevelopment potential. (Project description from original funding application)