Land Remediation

Site Registry Searches Simplified

December 29, 1999

BC OnLine has recently enhanced the Site Registry by providing a practical new way to do area-based searches. Searches for sites within a specific area can now be done with postal codes, to look up sites' latitude and longitude. This will be particularly useful for those wishing to find sites neighboring a specific site, who do not have the geographic coordinates of that site.

What is the Site Registry?

The Site Registry documents milestones in the site cleanup process, and provides public access to this information. It is not strictly a registry of contaminated sites. While some sites on the registry are contaminated, most sites listed have simply been investigated and require little, if any cleanup, or have already been cleaned up to government standards.

Electronic and Paper Records

The Site Registry contains both electronic and paper records. The electronic Site Registry, delivered to the public by BC OnLine, summarizes the investigation and cleanup history for sites in BC The paper Site Registry contains detailed information in documents used to create the electronic Site Registry.

What Kinds of Electronic Site Registry Searches are Available?

Given the diverse nature of site locations in BC, the electronic Site Registry allows a user to search three ways for information:

1. Numeric search: by Parcel Identifier (PID), Crown Land Parcel Identification Number (PIN) or file number, or Site Identification Number (SID).
2. Civic address search: by specific or general address.
3. Area-based search: by the latitude and longitude coordinates of a property to search within a 0.5 km or 5 km radius of a property for sites in the vicinity.

The user is presented with a search results list of sites. He or she can then select a site, request a synopsis or detailed report for that site, send it by e-mail or print it, and then return to the search results list to repeat the process. More information can be found by checking out the Site Registry User's Guide.

What has been Simplified?

The Site Registry now allows geographic coordinates to be looked up by entering a site's postal code. If you choose to look up the coordinates by postal code, note that postal code areas vary in size. For a large postal code area, the coordinates matching the postal code entered may be more than half of a kilometre from the actual site of interest. Therefore, for a large postal code area, a large area search, with a 5 km radius is recommended.