Clean Up of Fuel Leaked from an Underground Tank
Located in Fort Smith

Winner of a 2003 Showcase Award of Excellence, Consulting Engineers of Alberta

Aerial photo of excavation site	Piping splices for heating and cooling recovery lines

An old fuel spill was found at the Thebacha campus in Fort Smith when an underground tank was replaced. This led to the discovery of a large quantity of oil in the surrounding soils. Tests showed that the tank had been leaking for a number of years and the contamination had spread through a large part of the campus site.

The clean-up involved removal and replacement of the contaminated soil followed by reclamation of the soil through land farming. In total, 40,000 cubic meters of soil was excavated, of which 18,000 was removed for land farming. At its deepest point the excavation reached 9.5 meters below ground level, which is 5 meters below the top of the water table.

To gain the maximum benefit from the project, it was used as a training exercise for students in the college's Heavy Equipment Operator Program. Not only did this provide valuable training and substantially reduce project costs, it also allowed the college to invest in a large excavator, which it will use in its future programs.

As a further benefit from the project, the large excavation was used to install a heat pump system that will provide winter heating and summer cooling for the campus buildings. The college bought 112,000 feet of 1-inch tubing to be buried as the site was being back-filled. This system has the potential to save up to $16,000 a year in heating costs and to provide up to 74 tons of cooling for the college facility in the summer.