June 3, 2012:

There’s still much more left to do, but remediation of the grounds of the old Midwest/Standard oil refinery took a big step forward this week with the help of 16 hard working hands from the University of Wyoming Conservation Corps. Over three days, eight Conservation Corps crew members hauled away more than 16 truckloads of debris, ranging from old wood to broken glass, from the old site, which was purchased in late 2011 by the Laramie Rivers Conservation District, which plans to completely remediate the site over the next two-three years, Conservation District Director Tony Hoch said.

“We’re a very small organization,” Hoch said. “By having that group of eight young people out there for three days, it put us ahead weeks of what we could do ourselves. What they did would probably take us, with our staff, a month of using all of our free time.” Conservation Corps crew members also bring a wealth of useful knowledge and expertise to any project they’re involved in, Hoch said, making them an invaluable resource on projects like the cleanup on North Cedar. “There are dangerous things out there like lots of nails, so we want people who are trained to think in terms of safety,” he said. “We’ve tried to keep them outside, but if they’re working inside they know to use their dust masks, and they’re trained on chain saws and are extra-aware to take precautions.” For the crew members working on the site last week, the hard work also helped show the gravity of effects litter and abandonment can have on property. UW economics and finance student Nicole Filicetti said she enjoyed being educated on the real costs and long term goals of the remediation effort.

“This place is an eyesore, but we got to see the plans that they have, and just seeing what they’re going to do with this is amazing,” she said. Jason Koehler, a civil engineer student at UW, said that he hopes to use the knowledge he’s gained from working on the project on similar efforts in the future. “This is going to continue to be a problem, I think. Not just here, but nationwide, there are buildings getting old, decrepit and useless and something’s got to be done with them,” he said. Hoch said both the Conservation Corps and the Conservation District had worked together on projects in the future. Both organizations have very similar goals, which makes the partnership a perfect match, he added.

“The Conservation Corps is about doing projects on the ground, and the Conservation District is also about doing projects on the ground,” he said. Going forward, Hoch said the next step in remediation efforts will be to secure funding grants this fall to further clean the site and raze the buildings. “We’re kind of a slave to funding cycles, so we can’t apply for the big Environmental Protection Agency cleanup grant until fall, and we can’t apply for the Community Development Block Grant to raze the buildings until fall, so picking up debris around the site, getting tires out of there, that’s all we can do right now,” he said. “It’s one step at a time.” Depending on what happens with the site, Hoch said he sees more potential opportunities for the Conservation Corps to help out further.

“Once the property’s leveled and we have our environmental clearance, I could see them helping us building something, if that’s the direction we’re going to take,” he said.

By laramieboomerang.com