Recent flooding has delayed construction of the facility,and the plans were changed early in the process to move the accommodation units away from an old dump site thought to be problematic.
The Defence website has a section on its Regional Contamination Investigation Program,listing dozens of sites under scrutiny to “define and reduce contamination risks to human health and the environment”.
For Damascus Barracks,the website gives April 2016 as the date of last review,with a summary statement that “there is no known contamination at the property”.
The department has previously declined to provide updated information to the media.
However,an unpublished page obtained under FOI laws,bearing an identical format and marked as a “draft document pending consultation”,gives the date of last review as February 2021 - four months before the site was proposed for the quarantine facility.