Downtown dirt parking closing for cleanup

Some of downtown Truckee’s parking along the railroad tracks will be fenced off for work starting next week, and may last through the summer.

Crews will be pumping contaminated vapor from under the dirt shoulder at the site of a former Chevron gas station, fencing off about a dozen parking spots along Donner Pass Road. The closure will be on the eastern end of the dirt strip that provides some of Brickelltown’s parking.

“It’s minor ground water contamination, they [Conestoga-Rovers & Associates, the firm doing the cleanup] may even find it’s not even bad enough to continue remediation,” said David Griffith, redevelopment and housing coordinator for the Town of Truckee.

The cleanup effort is being paid for by Chevron, not the town, Griffith said.

The property is owned by the railroad, and was leased by Chevron, he said.

Stephan Bork, project manager with Consestoga-Rovers & Associates, said the gas station was taken out in 1988, and while naturally occuring bacteria have reduced the contamination, the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board wanted to see the process accelerated.

Machines will pump volatile vapors from the petroleum, treat it on the surface, and release it into the air, he said.

Conestoga-Rovers & Associates originally set out to do the work over the winter, Griffith said, but weather conditions, frozen ground, and already limited parking convinced them to wait for spring.

“Businesses would have had much less parking — we talked to a few of the businesses in Brickelltown and they agreed,” Griffith said.

Kat Browne, an employee at Scraps Dog Bakery across the street from the site, agreed that winter would have been worse.

“In the winter with all the snow we would have had no parking,” Browne said.

But even though the closure won’t be as bad in the summer, it could still cause some problems, she said.

“We’re definitely concerned about losing that parking, it will be a hassle without a doubt,” Browne said. “Hopefully there will be enough parking further down.”

Without striping to define parking stalls, and with for-sale cars taking up space, she said the rest of the dirt strip could fill up quickly.

“It depends on how polite people are when they park,” Browne said.

Pumps to pull contaminated groundwater from the soil will be constructed between April 22 and May 9, and pumping will begin early June, according to the consultants.

The estimated completion date is September 5, but work could be extended until December depending on what is found during the cleanup efforts, according to the consultants.