A brand new public green space will be built in Victoria’s Inner Harbour now that land cleanup is officially complete.
A total of 1.91 acres of federally-owned land was given to the City of Victoria on Wednesday by Transport Canada due to the completion of the remediation of contaminants.
Over the past year, Laurel Point Park underwent a two-part contaminant cleanup after a paint factory sitting on the land for over 70 years polluted the soil and environment around the area.
The industrial activity posed a large threat to marine life and land on both city and federal property.
“The Government of Canada takes its responsibility to clean up federal contaminated sites like Victoria’s Middle Harbour seriously,” Marc Garneau, Minister of Transport, said during Wednesday’s announcement.
Now that remediation is complete, the transfer will have a conditional and pending one-year-long post remediation review by undergoing sampling of soil and groundwater to ensure the land is contaminant-free
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps joined Garneau at today’s announcement and was happy to create a safer environment for the future.
“It’s not every day that a federal government or any government hands two acres of waterfront land to a municipality,” said Helps
The park will begin its first stages in planning and design this fall and is anticipated to be completed by February of 2020.
Andrea Ferrari
