Off the Beaten Track

In addition to completing in-situ remediation activities throughout the winter Vertex can undertake assignments in extremely remote locations.

Vertex recently won a competitive bid project and succesfully completed an injection of 24,000 kg of activated oxidant at a heavily-treed, remote site in Northern Saskachewan. A total of over 120,000 L of aqueous solution was injected at a site where the average temperatures ranged from -20ºC to -30ºC throughout the duration of the project. On the last day the temperature reached -50ºC with the wind chill, reportedly colder than Mars!

The challenges that Vertex had to overcome, in addition to the extreme cold weather, included the requirement to provide all water, power, heat, shelter and other support services to the site, which had been shut down for the winter. The requirement to inject into the low permeability silty clay soils that were present at the site posed an additional challenge.

Despite all of these obstacles, the project was completed in just a few weeks – an average cold weather injection rate of over 6,000 L per day! Vertex’s extensive experience enabled us to accept this challenge and successfully complete it despite the extremely difficult conditions.