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Fitch represented a group of residents on Lynnview Ridge in Calgary, where houses were built on a site that had been contaminated with petrochemical products decades earlier. The Lynnview Ridge residents found their basements smelled of hydrocarbons years after Imperial Oil Ltd. closed and remediated a nearby refinery.

He said Imperial purchased all of the houses on Lynnview Ridge, compensating the residents for the contamination – even though the company had not operated in that area for more than 30 years.

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In this case, he said, it was residents who complained, and that forced the province to act and pursue Imperial.

“It’s typically the environment department that will get involved and mandate a cleanup and they can go after a current owner, or a previous owner or even an occupier if their activity is what caused the pollution,” Fitch said.

Asked whether Calgary Sports and Entertain Corp., which owns the Flames, the CFL’s Calgary Stampeders as well as the local lacrosse and Western Hockey League teams, is pursuing the company that polluted the site of their proposed new arena, president and CEO Ken King said, “No, nor do I anticipate we will.”

“The file is in the hands of the Calgary Municipal Land Corp. now; they will deal with it as they see fit,” King said in an interview Monday.

Calgary Municipal Land (CMLC) manages the city’s real estate holdings and is responsible for the development of Calgary’s East Village, a community revitalization project on the opposite side of downtown from the Flames’ proposed arena.