From Uncertainty to Success

Ayres helped launch the Brownfields Assistance Program to help local governments assess, clean up, and breathe new life into blighted sites, unlocking the potential of downtown buildings, rural sites, and derelict plants and schools. Ayres’ role includes planning, visualization, engineering, and graphic design. Over 80 sites are using the State Partnership for Urban and Rural Redevelopment toolkit to spark community reinvestment.

Ayres provides comprehensive EIS, EIA, ESA, and NEPA-related services. Many of those services benefited Douglas during this project. Providing outreach, grant management, site assessments, and redevelopment services under an EPA Brownfield Site Assessment Grant, Ayres used grants to help community leaders, investors, and residents to imagine the revitalization of blighted areas.

Ayres is providing extensive environmental evaluation, permitting, and agency coordination services as part of this project widening a two-lane road to four lanes to accommodate future traffic.The 3.3-mile project's scope has expanded since the initial contract and includes the addition of new two-lane bridge over the Pithlachascotee River.

Ayres helped the City make the most of its EPA Brownfields Assessment Grant, identifying priority sites that held potential for environmental assessment, reinvestment, and community benefit. Through public outreach events, we heard input from close to 300 people. We guided property and business owners through environmental testing and assessment and provided visioning and financial tools.

Problem solving, communication, and collaboration served as keys to the success of this project involving managing groundwater at the new Timber Complex. Ayres' exceptional modeling experience and hands-on design approach produced a groundwater management plan and design approach that are safe and sustainable for years to come.

Ayres has conducted annual surface water and semi-annual groundwater monitoring since 2002 for the closed Blue Valley Landfill. After collection, the data is compiled for semi-annual submission to the Wisconsin DNR. All 35 groundwater monitoring wells and one stormwater location are sampled annually in April, and three monitoring wells are sampled in October. These locations are sampled for VOCs and 1,4-dioxane, and select wells are sampled for PFAS.

This manufacturing facility self-reported TCE and 1,1,1-TCA in its drinking water, triggering extensive adjacent residential water testing. Ayres directed residential sampling for over 30 years and designed a replacement well for the plant. Groundwater remediation systems cut groundwater contamination concentrations over 90 percent, and the cleanup case was recently closed.

Ayres helped the City identify, characterize, and document hazardous materials at priority brownfield sites, including asbestos, hazardous building materials, petroleum impacts, industrial wastes, abandoned containers, and coal ash. Ayres developed cleanup strategies, prioritized environmental liabilities, and prepared funding applications. The City won a grant to aid in the cleanup and redevelopment of the Bullock Electric Steam Plant.