The Tolko mill site in Kelowna as it looks now.
(ROB MUNRO / iNFOnews.ca)
April 23, 2021 – 6.30 a.m.
Tolko has received a new demolition permit from the City of Kelowna to demolish more of his mill.
The original permit, issued in February 2020, called for six buildings to be demolished. The latest permit, issued in March, can remove most, but not all, of the other permits.
The new work is ongoing, although Tolko has not yet completed an environmental assessment of possible contamination of the 40 acre property at the base of Knox Mountain in Kelowna on Okanagan Lake.
The location of the Tolko mill as it looked in May 2019.
(ROB MUNRO / iNFOnews.ca)
“The British Columbia Department of the Environment has confirmed to both Tolko and the City of Kelowna that demolition of structures that will not disrupt the underlying soil can be done before the DSI (Detailed Site Survey) is complete,” said Chris Towney, Tolko communications advisor in iNFOnews an email.
“The demolition continues and we expect it will be completed in the fall. At this point there may still be several small buildings on site. ”
Tolko had a year after receiving his first demolition permit in February 2020 to complete the environmental study. In December, the company asked the Ministry of the Environment for a one-year extension.
READ MORE: Potential contaminants buried at Tolko’s Kelowna facility are unknown
On March 16, the Ministry of the Environment announced in an email that it had not yet responded to the request for an extension. That was after Tolko received the new demolition permit from the city on March 8th.
“They have to remove some buildings and structures from there before they can do any more work,” Ryan Smith, director of Kelowna’s community planning department, told iNFOnews.ca. “The city took them over the construction site and identified some structures with them that could be interesting parts of what will happen there in the future.”
Smith wants the Tolko site to be part of the plan for the entire neighborhood around the mill, but that will take time.
While Tolko said the demolition work will be completed in the fall, Smith said whatever stands now will likely remain for the time being.
Tolko also said the wood boom in Lake Okanagan at the north end of the property will not be eradicated for the foreseeable future.
In February last year, a Kelowna realtor estimated the property to be nearly $ 50 million if it were sold for industrial use. That was before the real estate market boom in the past few months.
READ MORE: Kelowna’s mill location in downtown Tolko is likely worth nearly $ 50 million
One of the keys to selling or redeveloping the site is the pollution level of the soil, which has been used as a mill site for about 90 years.
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