Dedicated to our parents, John Nelson (June 17, 1981) and Shirley Nelson (May 10, 2017).
Our parents started John Nelson Construction Ltd., the company that led to the formation of NELSON Environmental Remediation Ltd., back in the 1960s. It all started after John and Shirley bought a farm near Vermillion, Alberta in 1962, and acquired a Caterpillar dozer. By the end of the year, John was contracting earthwork and by the early 1970s, John had a small construction company performing government road construction. Oil prices were climbing at this time, and investment in oil in the Lloydminster area exploded. John’s business grew alongside the booming industry throughout the 1970s, until the 1980s arrived and the advent of the National Energy Program put the industry into a steep decline.
John missed most of the decline, as he passed away mid-1981 at age 42. Shirley carried on the business and maintained the farm with the help of her sons, Warren and Darryl. We continued the earth moving construction for the energy industry and local governments, but by the early 1990s, the mature and saturated business looked to have little future. Around that time, the Alberta Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act came into effect and a new industry developed around contaminated soil and site reclamation with this added requirement. We formed NELSON Environmental Remediation Ltd. in 1992 to apply our years of experience in this new industry supporting the application of thermal desorption technology for clients in need of remediation and environmental liability elimination. The skills developed within John Nelson Construction Ltd. since the 1960s are crucial to our success and transformation into NELSON Environmental Remediation Ltd. corporation. Shirley was proud of this achievement, and we know John would have been as well.
“We formed NELSON Environmental Remediation Ltd. in 1992 to apply our years of experience in this new industry supporting application of thermal desorption technology for clients in need of remediation and environmental liability elimination.”
Finding our Way in a New Industry
We continue to grow and evolve in many ways. In recent years we are finding demand come from many places other than our conventional oil industry, and we feel our new team members’ wealth of experience will help grow our company even more. Our client list now includes all aspects of the oil industry (upstream/midstream/downstream), brownfield redevelopment, petrochemical, utilities, and mining. We continue to develop relationships across numerous jurisdictions and industries, which allows us to serve a global market valuing Canadian expertise.
We see environmental technology evolving rapidly around the world, and are excited to help it advance with our 25 years of experience. We are proud to be part of this development and considered a leader in the soil remediation industry, and we intend to take this much further in the coming years. We feel satisfied knowing our service benefits many and that with each project we complete, we have made the world a little bit better.
Growth for Today and Tomorrow
It was difficult to develop within this new industry, and also to master our innovative application of thermal desorption units (TDU) technology, but the journey of this new “Nelson” company has taken us to places we never imagined it would. When we started this business we anticipated serving Alberta and Saskatchewan O&G in locations similar to those the construction business had served in decades previous. We soon realized the industry could take us much further afield, and we also realized this would be necessary for long-term success of our business, as our specialized service has to serve a number of industries across many jurisdictions to grow and succeed. We are proud of our accomplishments of establishing our market and delivering our soil remediation services to various industries across many time zones and sites, from the Arctic to the tropics.
