Some 30 years ago BCIT and CNC worked co-operatively to support the first year of several two year BCIT technology programs at CNC – med lab, surveying, and lumber manufacturing technology.

Given the current proposal, take special note of the lumber manufacturing technology program.

I have to ask myself that when the two institutions were working co-operatively in that fashion at that time, why can they not do so now.

What are the forces at play that changed the game over the decades?

Why is one institution being set up to compete against another with predominately taxpayer money?

Will BCIT be a dominant player in the Wood Innovation program which might occupy the new building downtown?

And, putting homegrown support aside, will BCIT, UNBC or even UBC be the best leaders of a so called “innovative” structural wood research centre, or would the best leadership actually some from some other institution?

What are the long range plans and who is the true champion of such plans that can create a potential world class centre?

Or, are we just whistling Dixie?

Green and the council are just terrible. It’s probably not the case, but it ‘looks’ like they would be in favour if shutting down CNC if it meant it would help their ‘old’ friends.

If this isn’t the case, why would they allow it to ‘look’ this way? In politics, appearances are 80% of the job.

BTW, I would not assume that either BCIT or CNC has the proven expertise needed to educate and train anything other than people needed to maintain existing technology as contrasted to working with industry and quality research organizations to bring advanced and emerging technologies to resource communities needed to retool our extraction and primary manufacturing infrastructure.

Ah yes, Marshall Smith. The new CKPG political analyst. Did I spell analyst correctly ?

Icicle:”Green and the council are just terrible.”

Yes, unfortunately.

I think the people of prince George should
have the environmental people look into the cleaning up the soil at the old Rustad site.
This may have a serious impact on this project. Its only right. We need clean soil guys. Just saying.

What is with this big deal of Canfor thy want to look great thy give away the land and say it is worth 10 million. Great tax break for them I would give the thing away too just so I didn’t have to clean up the site that could cost over 10 million to clean it up lets pass that back to the tax payers as well. Canfor buys Rustads mill lays off the people says thy will call them back never do. Don’t have to pay out the full severance packages get the timber wrights and lets hide all this buy saying we are going to make a training center so thy look like a great corporate citizen. The employees of Rustads were treated very badly on this deal and Prince George lost lots of jobs no one looked out for there interest not even there union. Oh BTW is there not a union rep sitting on council

acidflash: “Oh BTW is there not a union rep sitting on council”

Yes, but he is only one and every motion needs a majority support to move ahead: At least five out of nine must be in favour.

Looks more like a smoke screen to evade environmental cleanup responsibilities. Is there really a need for more trades training given the loss of wood processing facilities in the last few years. What happened to all the workers laid off at Canfor’s Fort Nelson OSB plant and plywood plant, Clear Lake, Rustads, NCP, lakeland, and Babine. Did they just disappear off planet earth.

With Rustads being a sawmill I would think that most of the site cleanup would involve spilled petroleum products around buildings such as the old mobile equipment repair shop. This type of cleanup is not all that expensive, much like decommissioning an old service station, pile up all the contaminated soil, add some oil eating microbes, cover with a tarp ….tic…tic…tic…ding…DONE!

I don’t know the full history of the mill, if they had a dip tank at some point that would pose a bigger problem as they used to use some pretty nasty stuff. I would venture to guess that the MOE had the mill deal with any leachate from log storage on an ongoing basis.

If the Dix pays back the $50k contribution and fund the training center even though CNC is far from full capacity bookmark this page for reference(poor decision to open it). A future smarter government that does not think that the more civil servants we have the better will look at two half full training facilities and decide to consolidate them into one. The consolidation will cause local outrage because some jobs will be lost, much like when the decision was made to close near or half empty schools.

If the decision is made that we need more trades people build out CNC to full capacity rather than opening another place and duplicating all the overhead costs, administration, building maintenance, janitorial, etc.

just curious – “Looks more like a smoke screen to evade environmental cleanup responsibilities”
Does it “look” like this to anyone other than the posters on this board? Is there any proof or report or anything that says the site is contaminated or is it pure speculation? Is there anything that quotes the cost of a cleanup or is the “10 million” figure that is thrown about also pure speculation?

There’s very little question that nasty chemicals were used on site for dust suppression in the past. It really don’t take much to be considered contaminated.

Heck, you can take soil from Quesnel where the background chromium level is 60ppm, dump it on your front lawn in PG (where the background is 40ppm) and voila–you’re contaminated…

Heck, when it comes to contamination, look at almost any gravel area in PG and one should get high radon readings ….. anyone remember the radon issue in PG? I have not heard anything of it for a couple of decades now, I am sure.

The largest part of the site is paved, other than where the logs were stored.

Wanna see a contaminated site, consider the Domtar site where they do pressure treatment with all sorts of chemicals. The workers working with that stuff were walking contamination all the way home every night.

I agree, there should be an environmental assessment already avaialable for the site and I suspect it would not be anywhere near the 10 million as long as it was a normal sawmill operation without lumber being treated.

I do not know what it would cost to remove the asphalt. Perhaps it can be recycled into new pavement.
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The thing with the site for training is that the sort of things that could be done there simply cannot be done on the CNC site. The trades/technologies I envision would need the kind of space and zoning required that exists on the Rustad site.

Thank you to Ben and his crew for bringing some attention to this matter.

Does Canfor own the land that the old Rustad Mill sits on or is it BCR leased land?

Too bad that PG sawmill couldn’t be used for the reconstruction of Lakeland. Would be great for Prince George to be able to reclaim some of the property around the current Lakeland yard. It is a beautiful location and close to downtown. I understand the planer and the bio-engery system are still functional, yet a golden opportunity to increase the land for downtown.

Gus, I’m not sure I quite understand:

“The thing with the site for training is that the sort of things that could be done there simply cannot be done on the CNC site. The trades/technologies I envision would need the kind of space and zoning required that exists on the Rustad site.”

The zoning is M6 which does not allow for a trades school. The zoning needed would most likely be M1, M2, M3, or M4.

You’d probably understand this better than I would. How do you rezone contaminated land?

Any time I see or hear of Mayor Green, Marshall Smith and Brian Fehr working together on a development I get this sinking feeling that the average Citizen in Prince George will not benefit from their collaborative efforts, i.e., WIDC, Haldi Road Treatment Center,and converting the old Rustad Mill site into a training facility with 10 million dollars of tax payer’s money will be no different.
I too do not understand Gus’s comment: The thing with the site for training is that the sort of things that could be done there simply cannot be done on the CNC site. The trades/technologies I envision would need the kind of space and zoning required that exists on the Rustad site
…..what sorts of things might that be? The current zoning is heavy industry (M6) and it will probably need to be rezoned to light industry/institutional in order to house students in trades/technology training in a safe non-contaminated environment. This might explain the high costs to remediate the site.

Some of trades/technology training and certification that is needed now and will continue to be needed in the future in the energy, oil, mining, forestry and natural gas sectors are currently being offered at both CNC and UNBC. Both publically funded and publically operated facilities could use an infusion of money for more programs and training for, millwrights, steam operating engineers, mechanical engineers, silviculturists, foresters, welders, pipefitters, electricians, heavy duty truck drivers, heavy duty mechanics… and the list goes on. I’d rather see my tax dollars go to improving existing educational facilities in Prince George than to the establishment of a separate private-for-profit Rustad trades/
technology training facility owned and operated by CANFOR, a Corporation that makes enough profit and IMHO can afford to pay to clean up the site without going to the tax payers.

This is another questionable return on investment (ROI) of your tax dollars initiative that needs to be closely monitored. I am disappointed that our City Councillors are not asking these important questions mentioned in my points above. So far there has been no conversation around the council table explaining and or justifying the need for the Rustad Training Facility.

I have a novel idea! Why dont the companies that need these tradespeople and “specialists” create something like; say apprenticeships! Just saying!

Icicle, we see many times over the course of a year, Council deals with rezoning quite often and typically quite legitimately, as it should.

It is easier to provide a heavy industry training facility on a site zoned heavy industry than a site zoned for education institutes and then zone accordingly.

I do not know what those who are behind some sort of forest product training facility this time around (this is not the first time) have in mind. I do know, however, what I have in mind. It is not some sort of aerie fairy classroom dominated simulated environment, but a real operating mill designed for training, not for production. Their production is measured in quality and quantity of trained people, not lumber product.

The example of such a facility that I am familiar with is the oil and gas training centre Enform (formerly known as PITS) operates out of Nisku, Alberta. You can read about it here
http://www.enform.ca/locations/Nisku.aspx

As it says: “The Enform Nisku Training Facility hosts our hands-on training labs built to the exacting specifications and standards of the Canadian petroleum industry. The facility’s state-of-the-art equipment and design have earned it a reputation as the finest petroleum training facility in the world.”
http://www.enform.ca/training/production_training.aspx

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There are many problems associated with traditional apprenticeships for some specialized relatively highly technical industries. One of them is that most businesses are not large enough to allow people to be trained to a high and relatively consistent standard. Enform is in some ways similar to the BC Forest Safety Council, expcept that it is wll over 50 deades old, well established and very well recognized in the industry.

The operation at Nisku is jointly run by Enform and NAIT – so, an industry/college partnership as, in my mind, it needs to be.

It may be what the local group has in mind, ut they need to put a reasonable business plan together and spend spome money on doing so. We cannot second guess what they want to do, and they need to show us that they have the knowledge and interest to do this.

So far, they have produced less than the group before them.

Konus oil needs to be cleaned up. They got as much as they could out of the pipes but it was never flushed. They use to dump oil on the outside deck chains with an auto oil system. Where do you think that oil went? Thousands of gallons!

“house students in trades/technology training in a safe non-contaminated environment.”

Think about it people. We are training people to work in an industrial setting which has tons of safety hazards, including all sorts of hazardous materials, but we do not allow them to train in the typoe of environment they will be working in. What is the point of that.

ENFORM is an industrial SAFETY association made up of all the players in the pil and gas industry. THAT is where the need to be trained, not in some artificial bubble.

All sawmill and planer sites are contaminated. Some more so than others.

The condition of the leases on BC Rail property were that the property had to be restored to the condition it was in at time of leasing,. So most people would avoid terminating their lease because of the high costs of cleaning the site.

I think that Canfor bought the Rustad site from BC Rail properties a number of years ago, and as a result no longer have to clean the site to the specifications of BC Rail properties, however before Canfor sold the property, they would have to get rid of the contamination. No easy job.

The whole mill site has been contaminated over the years and would cost one hell of a lot more than 10 Million to clean up.

If the property is taken over by the BC Government then maybe cleaning it is no longer an issue, if that’s the case, then it would make sense to give it to the Government.

Who knows???

Before anyone jumps to all thse conclusions, are we allowed to get an environmental report on the property which will tell us from a professional point of view whether there is contamination and, if so, what it is and whether it is harmful to humans and/or the ecology.

If there is harmful contamination, recommend a method or remediation and estimate the cost to carry that remediation out.

I think I am fair in saying that until everyone has that in front of them, we do not know what it will cost or how long the site will have to remain undeveloped if bioremediation will be the key method recommended.