March 18, 2025
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Mendota tabs engineering firm to oversee brownfield cleanup

Remediation to start this year, mayor says

By Tom Collins
Annie Short, Mendota Project Director, presides over a Wednesday, June 12, 2024, press conference across from the Amtrak station in Mendota. There, a blighted property is to come down, to be replaced by a pavilion.

Remediation of this contaminated site begins some time in 2025. Annie Short, Mendota Project Director, seen here presiding over a press conference Wednesday, June 12, 2024, stands at the contaminated site across from the Amtrak station in Mendota. A pavilion will be constructed on the remediated site. (Tom Collins)

The contaminated site near Mendota’s train station won’t be cleaned up any time soon, but the city has identified an engineering firm to oversee the remediation.

Monday, the Mendota City Council announced Fehr Graham will oversee the bidding process and then launch the clearing of pollutants from the former dry-cleaning and auto parts business.

“It’ll start this year,” Mayor David Boelk said of the cleanup, “but I don’t know when it’ll finish.”

As previously reported, Mendota was awarded some $1.3 million to clean up the former Campbell Cleaners and Car Quest Auto Parts property, contaminated with volatile organic compounds and metals. In its place will go a bandstand: the Pavilion on Main.

The project was 20 years in the making. An environmental assessment in 2005 showed dry-cleaning chemicals had left behind a big mess that would require cleanup at a huge cost. The city later acquired the property and then applied for the Brownfields grant.

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