The playing field at Foothills Composite High School will be temporarily closed as more environmental testing will commence thanks to an increased level in methane discovered during its yearly testing in October.

Due to the field sites being a landfill till 1982, the Town is always on the ball to make sure the proper health and safety codes are up to date.

Facilities Maintenance Manger for the Town Brian Couronne says with the higher levels of methane discovered they had to do further testing.

"One of the problems that we're finding is that the methane that's produced from the old landfill site, is still elevated and we just want to take the necessary precautions as to make sure the public is safe and there's no risk," he says.

Couronne says there will be some closed access to the field.

"The school board is going to redirect some of their smoking areas around the school and then we're going to restrict some access to the playing field but that will be determined once we get further along. We're going to do some more bore hole testing and just find out what's going on with the field."

Couronne says the main cause for the rise in methane is due to the significant amount of rainfall in the summer.

"The field started to, what I'm calling, burping and it created the higher levels of methane. Previous years with testing that we've had, we've had no problems with methane and all of a sudden with the elevated water table it created a field of burp and we have a problem."

The Town of Okotoks in a media release Tuesday morning stated the following as to when the field would re-open.

Once the assessment is complete, more information and recommendations for appropriate management measures will be shared with the public.  The Town and school division are working closely with Alberta Environment and Parks to ensure best practices are followed.

More additional information can be found here.

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