After a year and a half of planning and communication with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the city of Kalona began the cleanup of a contaminated site on October 17. The site, a former gas station at the corner of Highway 22 and Fifth Street, has since been replaced with a 20-foot-deep hole, closing off a section of Fifth Street.

EcoSource LLC, an environmental service company, has been overseeing the process. Darren Fife, a consultant for EcoSource, says that the project is progressing right on time.

“We’ve been very excited with how the project has been moving.” Fife stated. “We’ve completed the excavation. We are bringing all the back-fill in and doing the compaction testing. Likely by Wednesday we are going to move on to completing the utilities within that area. We’ve got to put additional water lines back in the street. Following that, our hope is that we’ll get it graveled and framed up for concrete. By next week, hopefully folks will be able to utilize the road again.”

The contaminated soil was transported to a DNR-permitted land farm, where open air will reduce the petroleum constituents. Clean soil is being brought in from a local resource in Kalona to fill the hole.