Asbestos removal and remediation in Drumheller

What Drumheller’s housing means for asbestos

Coal mining in the valley began in 1911, and at its height 139 mines operated there. The town was a village by 1913, a town by 1916 and a city by 1930. Most of the valley’s mines closed during the 1950s as oil and gas took over; the Atlas No. 3 at East Coulee was the last, running from 1936 until 1979. In 1998 the City amalgamated with the Municipal District of Badlands No. 7, dropped back to town status, and took in the old mining hamlets — Cambria, East Coulee, Lehigh, Nacmine, Rosedale and Wayne — alongside Newcastle, North Drumheller, Midlandvale and Bankview, which had been annexed earlier.

The 2021 Census counted 7,909 residents and 3,198 occupied homes, slightly down on 2016. The scale of what came before is easier to see in the hamlets: East Coulee held more than 3,000 people around 1930 and again in the mid-1940s, and 148 at the 2016 census. The housing that served those populations is, for the most part, the housing that is still standing.

That is the point for anyone renovating here. A home built for a mining family between 1911 and the 1950s predates every asbestos ban and sits inside the period when the material was used most heavily: floor tile and black mastic, textured and stipple ceilings, drywall joint compound, pipe and boiler lagging, cement board and flue pipe, and vermiculite in the attic. None of it is dangerous sitting undisturbed. All of it is dangerous going through a saw. A single sample as a screening test is inexpensive, and a clean result ends the question.

The valley’s older commercial and institutional buildings carry the same materials plus their own — the 1954 courthouse on 2 Avenue West, designated a Provincial Historic Resource in 2017, is exactly the vintage where sprayed and mechanical insulation matters.

How a job in Drumheller runs

The steps are the same ones on our asbestos removal page. Nothing is skipped because the job is in Drumheller rather than Calgary.

• Testing. Samples go to an accredited third-party lab and you get the result in writing before anything is disturbed. A clean result ends it there.
• Notification. Alberta OHS must be notified at least 72 hours before any work that could release asbestos fibres, and the notice is filed per address. We file it for every restricted-area job.
• Permits. The Town’s Safety Codes department at 224 Centre Street (403-823-1300) issues permits, with Superior Safety Codes Inc. as the accredited agency. A demolition requires a building permit, and Drumheller says so directly on its own permit page: “We may require an asbestos abatement report.” The Town also asks that water meters be returned to Town Hall, that power and gas be disconnected, that you contact the regional landfill about disposal, and that dust be controlled so it does not reach neighbouring property. All four are things we handle or document as part of the job.
• Disposal. Drumheller is one of the few places in our service area where the waste does not have to travel. The Drumheller Regional Landfill on Highway 10 East accepts asbestos, but only on its terms: a special waste disposal application has to be submitted and approved first, then 48 hours’ notice, after which the operator excavates a pit and the material is buried immediately on offloading. Burials can be cancelled for weather — rain or high wind — so the schedule needs slack in it. Where the site cannot take a load, Calgary is the alternative. Shepard Landfill in southeast Calgary is the only City site that accepts commercial asbestos, under a free Industrial Waste Permit and a booked appointment requested by 10 a.m. the day before. The rate is $200 a tonne, rising to $220 in February 2026. Material is wetted before bagging, double-bagged in 6-mil polyethylene and sealed, and you get the weight ticket and the manifest.
• Travel. Drumheller is about 138 kilometres northeast of Calgary on Highway 9, which leaves the Trans-Canada just east of Chestermere and runs through Irricana and Beiseker. Travel is priced into the written quote — no separate mileage line.

The Red Deer River, and why this is flood country

Drumheller has the longest flood record of any town we serve. The 1915 flood remains the largest on file at about 2,000 cubic metres a second; 1954 reached 1,530, 2005 reached 1,450 and 2013 reached 1,310, with a state of emergency declared that June. In April 2018 the Town declared a state of local emergency and ordered a mandatory evacuation for Wayne and residents along Highway 10X when rapid snowmelt pushed the Rosebud River up.

The response has been one of the larger municipal mitigation programs in Alberta. The Drumheller Flood Mitigation and Climate Adaptation System began in April 2019 with a budget of $59.65 million, which grew to roughly $81.5 million after a further $27.3 million in the province’s 2023 budget. Twelve berm programs are substantially complete, protecting more than 800 properties, with a Michichi Creek flood wall still in design. New provincial flood mapping for the valley was finalized in September 2024 and updated in April 2025, covering 56 kilometres of the Red Deer River along with Kneehills Creek, Michichi Creek, the Rosebud River and Willow Creek.

What none of that changes is what happens inside a building that takes water. Wet insulation and drywall have to come out, and mold follows within days. In a valley where most of the housing predates 1990, the material that got wet is very often the material that needs testing first — so we sample before demolition, dry immediately where the material is clean, and run the water damage restoration and the abatement as one job. The same goes for storm damage: the July 2014 hailstorm brought 90 km/h winds, cracked siding, broken windows and shingle damage across the town, and every one of those is a route for water into a wall.

If you searched for an abatement company in Drumheller, this is the page. We cover the valley hamlets — Nacmine, Rosedale, Wayne, East Coulee, Lehigh and Cambria — on the same terms as the town itself.

Related reading

• A flooded basement: the first 24 hours
• Asbestos removal, step by step
• I found asbestos. What do I do now?