Imperial Oil to launch engagement on Lynnwood Ridge land

Imperial Oil is conducting engagement on plans for parcels of land in southeast Calgary that used to be the site of one of its former refineries

The land in Lynnwood Ridge was an industrial refinery in the 1920s and became a residential neighbourhood in the 1980s after the City of Calgary purchased the land.

However, lead and hydrocarbon vapour were found in the soil in 2001 following complaints. After residents battled Imperial Oil for four years, it purchased and demolished more than 140 homes and several apartment blocks, cleaned the area, while forcing many residents out nearly 25 years ago.

Lorraine Robinson, a 40-year resident of Lynnview Ridge, is one of the few who refused a buyout and instead stayed after it was discovered the soil in the area was contaminated.

“We were sitting on the ridge, perfect view of downtown, river down below, perfect view of the mountains,” she told CityNews.

The land near her is among the 29 acres Imperial Oil says it either owns or is responsible for. It became a green space in the late 2000s before Lynnwood Ridge Park opened in 2019.

Imperial Oil said in a statement that its role is focused on site preparation, not as the developer, describing discussions as “early engagement,” not “finalized plans.”

Researcher, filmmaker, and admin of the Before Lynnwood Facebook page, Laura Comden, is reluctant, saying the corporation and developers must learn the whole story before “repeating” what happened.

“Yesterday it was lead, and tomorrow will be something else, like dangerous vapours from a data center,” she explains.

“What happened at Lynnwood Ridge was that there was a lot of denial, a lot of downplaying of the harms, and then a lot of waiting until it blew over. And I fear what we’re seeing today with Imperial wanting to build on the ridge is that they assume it has blown over.”

She says residents started to smell weird things in their basement and decided to reach out to the city. She says Imperial denied the existence of tanks up there on the ridge until residents found pictures of them. However, action wasn’t immediate as its testers deemed the site safe.

“They could have helped them. They could have said, ‘Yes, there is diesel floating on the groundwater here.’ ‘Yes, we replaced three meters of soil, but deeper, before that, four to ten meters, there is still contamination,” she said.

“What they did instead, which is what they do, is they, instead of looking at the whole picture, they took pieces and tried to find proof of safety.”

When it finally came out that the soil was contaminated, it confirmed the residents’ worries, Comden says.

In a slide deck to community members, Imperial Oil says it will begin marketing the vacant lots in the Lower West Ridge of Millican Estates in the coming months as part of a broader effort to return surplus land to productive use.

Ward 9 Councillor Harrison Clark tells CityNews it’s preliminary right now.

“But when a large organization like Imperial Oil wants to make something happen in a community like Ogden, it’s created quite a bit of buzz,” he said.

Robinson says she’d be open to redevelopment.

“Any building that takes place between those houses, our homes and if this section gets cleaned, that they’d be single-family homes,” she said.

Zev Klymochko, the president of Millican-Ogden Community Association, says the area should be safe and habitable.

“People generally are open to having more homes in the neighbourhood, getting our population back up to support schools, businesses and the future transit lines,” he said.

“There used to be 140 homes here that were removed 20 years ago, but the caveat would be, it has to be livable. The soil has to be in good condition.”

As for the future of the land, Comden says understanding the history of the area remains an important aspect for anyone who wants to develop in the area.

“I just don’t want parts of the story to disappear in time because they say that people who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it,” she said.