Photo: Chelsea Powrie

WorkSafeBC has entered the controversy around an infamous Green Mountain Road trash pile in Penticton, posting a stop work order Tuesday.  

The former Appleton Waste dump site ignited controversy last week when suddenly much of the mountain of garbage was moved to a different location on the property, owned independent of the Penticton Indian Band by Adam Eneas. 

Ecora Engineering announced Saturday they were taking care of the cleanup. But WorkSafeBC appears to still have some concerns. 

"It seems that they've been set up with some information about the site potentially having asbestos, but we've got no information to support that," said Ecora president Kelly Sherman. 

"We will further assess it, just to provide WorkSafe with the information they need to ensure the health and safety of those involved is addressed, but right now we're not doing any activity at the site anyway so their stop order has no impact. It did stop one engineer from doing some due diligence checks today but that's it." 

Sherman explained that the recent controversy caused them to halt work this week.

"We were just going to resolve some of the conversations going on right now so there was nothing happening anyway."

Ecora has been involved with the site cleanup since March. The company took on the abandoned waste project at no charge to Eneas, after the federal government's COVID-19 wage subsidy allowed the firm to keep their staff employed during the recent slowdown.

He is confident that material at the site is safe. 

"All the construction material that has come to the site was done under a permit, either under the RDOS or the City of Penticton," Sherman said.

"There's nothing to suggest anything has fallen through the cracks on that end, these guys went bankrupt but there's nothing to suggest these guys were taking unpermitted material or there's any risk to that material."

Ecora will be doing hazardous waste assessments to confirm, but they are not worried.