Big cleanup clears way for Wal-Mart Supercenter

An old nursery, a paint shop and a radiator repair facility left large swaths of contaminated land that needed to be cleaned up to allow development of a Wal-Mart Supercenter near the intersection of U.S. 395 and East Second Street.

By the time the cleanup was done, 5,000 tons of soil several hundred truckloads was hauled away from a site that had been used to store oil-filled drums, while another 1,000 tons of soil were excavated and removed from an area that once housed a radiator shop.

The 24-acre parcel of land was purchased by the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and is slated for a new Wal-Mart store to replace the company's undersized Northtowne Plaza facility. The cleanup was overseen by the Reno office of Kleinfelder Inc.

Josh Fortmann, project geologist for Kleinfelder, says the job also included removal of an asbestos cement water line. Clean Harbors

Environmental Services performed the soil excavation and hauling, while

Diversified Demolition handled removal of the asbestos water line.

"Once we found that there was some contamination on the site that exceeded regulatory cleanup goals, we initiated cleanup," Fortmann says.

Contaminated dirt was hauled to a hazardous waste site or the Lockwood Regional Landfill.

Fortmann says coordination with multiple government agencies was a challenge on the job.

Although the Indian Colony owns the entire site placing environmental cleanup under the oversight of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency the section of land that formerly housed the radiator repair facility still was under jurisdiction of Washoe County and the Nevada Department of

Environmental Protection when the job began.

"We had three regulatory agencies out here," Fortmann said. "That was really the largest challenge, coordinating cleanup on two different types of property and with the three agencies. We overcame that with lots meetings and lots of conference calls."

A $950,000 loan from the State of Nevada Brownsfield Program and a $2 million grant from the EPA paid for the work.

"Without the direction provided by the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony for the redevelopment of the site, and the funding provided by the state, it would have been difficult to complete the project," Fortmann says.

Wal-Mart is expected to break ground on a new supercenter in February. The site also will include a new $8 million state restitution facility; the old restitution facility, located just east of the cleanup work, will be turned into a six-acre cultural center.