Owners of former Russo sawmill site in Kelowna seek permit for wood cleanup

Sawmill cleanup continuing

Photo: Contributed

Owners of the former Russo Sawmill site on Kelowna's Old Vernon Road are going back to the Agricultural Land Commission for permits to continue with clean up of the site.

The latest application seeks a non-farm use to facilitate the cleanup of current wood debris from the site.

“Current wood debris will be cleaned up using a mobile grinder, the mulch wood debris on site will be used for future tree planting,” the application states.

“Parking of trailers and equipment will be used to conduct the clean up operations and security of the site, allowing us to remediate the land back to agricultural use.

“Concrete recycling will also take place on the property to crush the current concrete on site for use as aggregate.”

The sawmill, which began operating in the 1950s, shut down in 2005. Since then, the city has tried on numerous occasions to have the property remediated, but to no avail.

In July of last year, owners were issued a three-year permit to return the property to agricultural production by the ALC.

After that permit expires, only ALR uses will be permitted.

Under provisions of that permit, the importation of wood chips, sand, subsoil, and topsoil for soil bending will be allowed for the first year, while soil bending including grinding, screening, sorting, piling, mixing and decomposing of historic wood waste, new wood chips and sand to create soil products for commercial sale will be allowed over the life of the permit.

In the latest application, owners say there are both short and long-term benefits to the application.

“In the short term we will clean up the land areas to prepare for tree planting for agricultural land use while continuing to clean debris to remediate back to ALR for long term use.”