Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
A groundbreaking ceremony will be in Palouse today, May 31, at 4 p.m. at the Main Street Brownfield environmental cleanup site.
The one-hour event will mark the start of the demolition phase for the state Department of Ecology project, which is intended to clean up a contaminated former site of a fertilizer producer and fuel stations.
The building which housed the operations will be demolished. A steel shop building was removed after an auction sale in April.
Palouse Mayor Michael Echanove will speak at the groundbreaking ceremony along with officials from the DOE and Washington State Department of Commerce.
“We want to have the cleanup phase wrapped by Sept. 1,” said Echanove.
Once the remaining building is demolished and removed, the DOE and the environmental engineering firm of Maul Foster Alongi of Bellingham will oversee cleanup of the site.
This will include removal of 2,300 cubic yards of contaminated soil, followed by planting vegetation and monitoring ground water.
At that point the re-use phase will begin with the city deciding how to use the property in the future.
The city of Palouse received five bids for the demolition project for the site and chose Larson’s Demolition, Inc. The motion carried unanimously at the May 22 city council meeting to accept the $19, 829 bid.
Other bids included Talisman Construction at $19,833.04, Ace Elliott Landscaping $27,288, Skycorp LTD $28,079, and R. Wilson Construction $30,879.
A Brownfield site is defined as a vacant or underutilized property that is constrained by environmental contamination issues. The Palouse site is being funded by grants from the DOE and the federal Environmental Protection Agency, along with a revolving sub-loan grant from the Washington State Department of Commerce.
The total estimated cost of the project is $786,000.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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