Old Kleefeld landfill site now an outdoor classroom

The RM of Hanover took recycling to another level when the municipality permanently closed the Kleefeld landfill site on Highway 52 and had it transformed into the Tourond Creek Discovery Centre, which has been described as a mini version of Oak Hammock Marsh.

The Discovery Centre hosted the regional envirothon competition for high school students there in April.

The envirothon, in its 28th year, is sponsored by the Manitoba Watershed Association, and teaches students about the environment and sees students from across the province compete regionally, then provincially, and moving on to a national competition in July.

This was the first time the Seine Rat Roseau River Watershed District hosted the East Regionals Manitoba Envirothon and the first time it was held in the Southeast.

Alex Wolf, a SRRWD technician in charge of activities at the Discovery Centre, said nine teams from six schools competed in the regional competition: Gimli, Shevchenko (Vita), Shaftesbury, Grant Park, the Lauriette Academy (Winnipeg) and St James Collegiate.

The Envirothon regionals are designed for students to come and learn for the day. Students have the Envirothon experience without a large time commitment to studying resource documents ahead of time.

The regional teams are tested in five disciplines, including aquatic ecology, soils and land ecology, plant ecology, and wildlife, Wolf explained. Students get an hour-and-a-half of orientation and training at the various stations throughout the Discovery Centre before the tests.

The top team from each region, South, Central, West, East and North, and the balance of the 20 to advance are based on test results in all five regions.

The two Shaftesbury teams were at the top of the regional competition at Tourond and teams from Shevchenko School, Gimli, and Grant Park were among the top 20 province-wide to advance to the provincials at Camp Arnes.

Team Terra from Shaftesbury won the Manitoba Envirothon provincial competition and will be representing Manitoba at the international competition in Calgary.

Alex Wolf, who is in charge of the outdoor classroom, says they hope in future to have more schools coming to Tourond Creek Discovery Centre on a regular basis.

In 2024, four classes took advantage of the outdoor classroom near Kleefeld. Two elementary schools came in spring and another two in fall. This year, the Southwood School came in March, but it was a brutally cold day.

The regional envirothon, unfortunately had no Hanover School Division high school teams, but Wolf hopes that will change in the future.

“The Seine Rat Roseau River Watershed District has tried some outreach to schools, but it would be easier for schools to come to us.”

Any grade level is welcome to spend a day at the Centre, although resource materials are geared to Grades Four to Six. Resource materials can be adjusted to meet curriculum, adding something like soil tests for high school students, for example.

Educationally, Wolf, who also volunteers for AITC programs says working with kids outdoors at the TCDC is more fun than in the classroom Hands-on learning is better than just looking at pictures in the classroom, she says.

The Tourond Creek Discovery Centre has been more than a decade in development with the first classes coming out to the outdoor classroom in 2012.

The RM of Hanover rezoned the outdoor learning environment to a park in 2013 to open the centre not only to schools but to the general public as well.

Members of the Hanover School Division and the Seine Rat River Conservation District were responsible for launching the outdoor classroom project, eight years after the Kleefeld landfill site closed in 2002.

It was in 2010 that council for the Rural Municipality of Hanover gave its blessing to the Seine Rat River Conservation District (now SRRWD) in collaboration with the Hanover School Division to use the old dump site as an outdoor classroom.

Reeve Stan Toews, at the time, said council agreed that the site had a diverse habitat and a variety of wildlife, making it suitable for educational use.

Toews said the site has a creek and bush area, making it a prime location to study flowers and bugs, rather than have students trek all the way to the Sandilands.

No motorized vehicles were to be allowed on that site, and there would be no digging where the active pit area once stood, as well as no hunting.

It has taken years to develop the site, transitioning it from an unused landfill site to the Tourond Creek Discovery Centre.

Today, the TCDC is bursting with life. Visitors may encounter the diversity of plant and animal species unique to each of five micro-ecosystems, including grasslands, aspen forest, rich woodland, wetland and the Tourond Creek.

This area would have historically been mostly tall grass prairie made up of highly productive soils. Most of this natural grassland has been turned into cropland.