Rock Falls hires consultant for Micro Industries asbestos removal

ROCK FALLS — The city of Rock Falls has hired outside help to rid the former Micro Industries building of asbestos.

The Rock Falls City Council on Tuesday, Dec. 19, unanimously voted to contract with Terracon Consultants of Glendale Heights for asbestos consulting services at a cost not to exceed $98,640.

“As part of our $2.2 million grant that we received for the Rebuild Downtowns and Main Streets, about $600,000 of that was going towards asbestos abatement,” City Administrator Robbin Blackert said. “In order to write the grant, we had to hire Terracon to do the survey of asbestos, which ended up being about 600 pages long.”

Forty areas in five of the Micro Industries buildings were found to contain asbestos, according to Terracon’s proposal for consulting services.

Terracon will prepare an asbestos abatement scope of work package, assist in bidding out the project and in selecting the contractor, oversee the abatement process and complete an abatement close-out report, according to the proposal.

Blackert said the city is looking to have the asbestos removed sometime in late spring or early summer 2024.

“You have to have water to remove asbestos, so we don’t want to do it in cold weather,” she said. “So we’re looking at that time period, with demolition to follow shortly after.”