November 18th, 2024

Environmental Appeals Board grants another extension to Westar landfill

By MEDICINE HAT NEWS on February 4, 2023.

Crews try to control a landfill fire that burned east of Medicine Hat for weeks in the late fall of 2013.NEWS FILE PHOTO

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Ten years after the fire at the Westar landfill east of Medicine Hat, the Alberta Environmental Appeals Board has granted another one-year extension to the owners and Alberta Environment as they work through mediation.

Both parties say the site in Cypress County, near the junction of Highway 41 and 41A, is environmentally stable in an update filed with the board this month.

The next reporting date is in January 2024.

The owners of the landfill were required to provide a remediation plan following a weeks-long fire in 2013 that burned an estimated 80 feet deep into the refuse pit.

A 2018 agreement required that all material removed during fire-fighting activities be returned to the pit by 2021.

Since the process is still subject to appeal the board has not made public the level of progress.

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