City crews and ball players took to the field this week to polish up two local baseball diamonds.
Workers resumed digging at the Mosquito diamond in Legion Memorial Ball Park Thursday in an attempt to remove its contaminated soil. The diamond has been closed since July after a groundskeeper set diesel and gasoline fires on its bases and pitcher’s mound to try and dry them out.
Cleanup crews moved in to dig out the contaminated soil, said city environmental manager Leah Jackson, but stopped after 15 tonnes since they couldn’t determine the extent of the contamination. Council voted in September to take $30,000 from its stabilization reserve to finish restoring the diamond, which is leased to the St. Albert Minor Baseball Association (SAMBA).
Staff would excavate a five-by-five metre plot around each base, Jackson said, dig down about 18 centimetres, and fill the holes with fresh clay. The contaminated soil would go to a landfill. “It’s quite a sizeable amount,” she said, but they want to be sure they get everything. They will then do a follow-up test to confirm that the contamination is gone.
SAMBA members will replace the diamond’s sod and soil this weekend, said group president Ed Ewasiuk, but will hold off on the shale to give the clay time to settle over the winter. “We fully expect to have it open by spring.” He said he was very thankful for the city’s help in the repairs.
Spot-checks done this summer on the park’s other diamonds suggested that they might also be contaminated by diesel. The city planned to do further tests on those diamonds in fall 2011, Jackson said.
Ball players also cleaned up Meadowview Ball Park this week after river watchers spotted a patch of shale that had run off into the Sturgeon River.
During last month’s Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, Jackson said, residents discovered a three-by-one metre patch of riverbank that had been covered by red shale from the nearby Meadowview ball diamond.
The shale wasn’t visible in aerial photos from 2007, Jackson said, so it was likely washed there by heavy rains in 2008. There did not appear to be any significant harm to the river as a thick wall of reeds kept most of the shale out of it. “The vegetation did its job.”
Members of the St. Albert Men’s Slow Pitch Association, which manages the diamond, planned to work with the city this week to remove the shale and lay down some erosion-stopping coconut matting. The vegetation should grow back in about a year, Jackson said. “As long as we get it cleaned up and stabilized, we should be good.”
Oscar the Grouch has been kicked to the curb for this year’s Waste Reduction Week, replaced by a smiling titan from ancient Greece.
Oct. 18 to 24 is Waste Reduction Week in Canada. The annual event is part of a national effort to encourage people to toss less trash. Oscar the Grouch, the trash-loving creature from Sesame Street, has been its mascot for the last two years.
But not this year, said campaign spokesperson Christopher Hilkene. “We had two good years with Oscar, but we decided to do something different.”
This year’s mascot is a smiling blue stick figure called Atlas carrying the world on his back, a reference to the giant that held up the heavens in Greek myth.
Atlas has been around for thousands of years, Hilkene said, and we aren’t making his load any lighter with our waste. “We’re asking Canadians to help ease his load by reducing the amount of waste they produce.”
City residents are now diverting 41 per cent of their trash from the landfill, said St. Albert environmental co-ordinator Meghan Myers, and are recycling 63 per cent more material since the introduction of curbside recycling. The recent household hazardous waste roundup also collected some 1,255 aerosol paint cans — three times as many as last year.
The city is bringing in kitchen and yard waste recycling next year, Myers noted, which could eliminate about half of an average home’s waste. “We’re asking residents to evaluate the organics they’re putting in their garbage right now,” she said, as they might want to downsize their subscription level next year.
