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SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 2011
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Curbed in the city BY THERESA MCMANUS REPORTER tmcmanus@royalcityrecord.com
Basil Fitze views the Royal City’s sidewalks in a new way now that’s he’s getting around town in a wheelchair. For the past year or so, Fitze has been getting around in a power chair because of a variety of health issues. It’s opened his eyes to some of the issues faced by people using mobility aids such as wheelchairs and scooters. “In parts of New Westminster, some of the sidewalks are just terrible,” he said. “There are some places that look like they have never been touched.” Fitze suspects he’s not alone in having trouble navigating through parts of the city. He said people notice the “little things” when they’re in a wheelchair, things they wouldn’t necessarily notice if they were walking. “Walking everywhere is fine. In a power chair or a scooter or a manual wheelchair, there are some areas that are aren’t manoeuverable,” he said. “I do feel there are areas that need to be adjusted. It is frightful.” In addition to cracked sidewalks, Fitze ◗Curbed Page 3
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No curb cut: Basil Fitze points to one of the sidewalks he’s unable to access in his neighbourhood because it doesn’t have a curb cut.
Pier park site cleanup costs may triple BY THERESA MCMANUS REPORTER tmcmanus@royalcityrecord.com
Cleaning up a contaminated site doesn’t come cheap. Although the City of New Westminster had originally anticipated it would cost $1.5 million to deal with contamination issues at the Westminster Pier Park site, it’s likely those costs could reach $5 million. Work on Westminster Pier Park continues, with pile driving expected to wrap up in April and construction of the park set to begin soon. “The project is proceeding well. We are on time and on budget,” said Jim Lowrie, the city’s director of engineering. “The
community is going to see a tremendous asset on the Fraser River come this fall.” The City of New Westminster purchased the waterfront site for $8 million, and the city, the province and the federal governments each contributed $8.3 million toward the park’s construction. Located on the waterfront between Sixth and Elliott streets, the site was used for coal storage warehouses, industrial equipment operations, industrial machine shops, marine works, foundries or metal scrap melting, coal-fired power generation, marine and automobile fuelling and land filling on the site. Those industrial uses prompted the previous owner to commission two site inves-
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ly,” Lowrie said. “It was a very small corner of the site, about the size of one small city lot. It is excessively deep. The reality is it seems to be coming from offsite.” A staff report stated the contaminated groundwater is restricted to an area that’s about 350 square metres, with the highest concentration being located just north of the city’s site, within the railway corridor. The contaminants, which are chlorinated solvents, were found mostly at a depth of 40 to 50 feet. “While the contaminants are considered to be relatively static, a sub-surface
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tigations and the city to commission its own detailed site investigation. “The reality is we got an excellent deal for the property,” Lowrie said. “It had an assessed value of $16 million. We bought it for $8 million.” Lowrie said the city paid about the same for the property in 2009 that the owner had bought it for years earlier. Having finished cleanup of the site’s contaminated soil, the city is now addressing issues relating to contaminated groundwater on a small section of the site. “We did do an investigation study. It was based on representative samples of the groundwater. This was not found original-
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