This photo shows 1040 Old Vernon Rd. in the foreground where the large boat is and 982 Old Vernon Rd. behind, where the dump trucks are.

(ROB MUNRO / iNFOnews.ca)

Ryan Nixon is fed up with being painted as the bad guy in the decades-long effort to clean up the former Russo Sawmill site near the Kelowna airport.

Nixon is operations manager for TNT Services that has been working on one the four properties formerly owned by the Russo family since 2016, but TNT has been doing so without proper permits from the City of Kelowna or the Agricultural Land Commission.

“These processes of dealing with these governing bodies has literally been dragging out for four or five years now,” Nixon said. “This isn’t us holding things up. This is them. The city and the Agricultural Land Commission have two choices. You tell me to stop and I go broke and everything stays the same or I just need to be left alone so that I can do this.”

The site at 982 Old Vernon Road there has piles of various materials 10 to 15 feet high and stacks of old rotting dimensional lumber and tree stumps.

One pile in the centre was about 200 feet wide by 400 feet long, Nixon said, about 25,000 yards of material.

“The numbers are crazy. But you know what? That pile is almost gone in the middle here. I just have the stuff we’re trying to resell so we can pay for more remediation,” Nixon said.

It’s not only old lumber and dirt piled up on the 10-acre site.

Buried one to three metres deep is wood waste layered with heavy clay that needs to be dug up then mixed with soil and green plant material to compost and turn into topsoil that the company sells – about 10,000 yards a year.

“We screen out the fines of the old wood waste that is broken down and mix it with topsoils and subsoils and a bit of clay and we make a good usable landscape topsoil and we’re planting trees and grass in it and it’s growing fine,” Nixon said. “I get soil tests. There’s no real contaminants there.”

When the Agricultural Land Reserve was created in 1972, the Russo site was put into the reserve and the land commission has ruled for years that it’s suitable for agricultural use, although that would mean hauling in hundreds of thousands of dollars of topsoil, according to a City of Kelowna report.

Since it’s in the land reserve, composting operations are not technically legal.

In order to get the site cleaned up – which Nixon says he’s working hard to do – there has to be some flexibility in what temporary uses are allowed and the operator needs to be able to make enough money to pay for the remediation, Ryan Smith, the city’s community planning department manager, told iNFOnews.ca.

READ MORE: Massive joint effort needed to clean up 'historically messed up' Kelowna sawmill site

“I have to down mix all these materials and there has to be some money generated to do it,” Nixon also said. “I’m literally almost going bankrupt. I’m trying to not go broke because of somebody who has this giant problem.

“The reality is that we’re really committed to doing this. This is my entire livelihood and my parents’. There’s no get rich quick. I work my ass off and I spend hundreds and thousands of dollars fixing that property every year.”

The company provides a variety of trucking, excavating and other services, including hauling snow for the City of Kelowna.

A few years ago, it was fined for dumping snow on the site, something Nixon said he has not repeated.

Smith pointed out to iNFOnews.ca that snow was being dumped on a number of agricultural properties at that time so the city cracked down on the practice.

There are those who question the benefits of TNT’s operations, including Alexandra and John Wright, who own the farm to the north of the property.

They're suing TNT and the property owner for what they say are flood damages, tree death, noise and dust.

TNT and the owner have countersued.

Last November, the Ministry of Environment issued a warning to TNT for dumping wood and yard waste on the site without a permit.

While the offence could carry fines up to $1 million and/or jail up to six months, the warning also gave TNT 30 days to respond and simply said they need to apply for waste discharge authorization.

“When I replied to her, I said I would gladly do that as soon as we have the operating permit to also continue on,” Nixon said. “I got a warning and I replied and they never said that was unacceptable. I’m just waiting for the Agricultural Land Commission to give us the official land use permit.”

Property owner Raj Kandola bought the land in 2005. She applied for non-farm use permits in 2017, 2019 and again in March 2023. The latest application is still in the hands of the land commission.

While the commission issued a stop work order for the neighbouring property at 1040 Old Vernon Road, no one has ever told TNT to stop working, Nixon said.

READ MORE: UPDATED: Land Commission orders end to dumping on former sawmill site in Kelowna

“My pledge was I should have the majority of everything that is above ground gone by the end of the permit, which should be six years on,” he said. “We should be able to get this done in six more years. That will be semi-flattened or level and slightly graded, not dusted with topsoil. That would have to be addressed and approved, potentially.”

He hoped that work will include digging up and processing all the buried wastes as well.

“I have a vermicast operation and I have two large worm farms (onsite),” Nixon said. “I’m trying to create an organic matter recycling facility and I’m trying to do things more naturally and create non-synthetic fertilizers for our local growing industry.”

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