Yorkville seeks to cleanup decades of environmental pollution in downtown area

With a transformed downtown recreation area on the horizon, the long sought environmental pollution cleanup in Yorkville is making strides.

In May, the city was awarded a $3 million Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program grant to revitalize the downtown area, including new walking and biking paths, improved safety features and aesthetic improvements, like outdoor lighting and decorative pavers and entryways.

The improvements are part of the envisioned plan for the downtown Hydraulic District, which city planners hope will someday spur mix-use residential and commercial developments near the Fox River.

A music stage, an events plaza, and renovated businesses and walkways are all part of the vision for a rejuvenated downtown district.

Before any construction begins, the area needs to undergo a significant environmental hazard cleanup, or remediation. The city has been trying to start the cleanup as early as 2016, and was finally able to move ahead once it purchased the downtown FS Property in 2024.

The entire site is located west of Illinois Route 47 between East Hydraulic Avenue and East Van Emmon Street.

The needed cleanup is a large one, with the city council approving at its Aug. 12 meeting $100,000 in consultant fees with Terracon Consultants, Inc. for the remediation work, including some Illinois Environmental Protection Agency fees.

The environmental contaminants in the soil come from decades of agricultural and industrial usage of the area’s properties.

The FS Property included a lumberyard, feed mill, equipment repair services, fertilizer supply, animal feed supply, diesel fuel supplies for local farmers, and a distributor of kerosene, oil and gasoline. New pollutants from these services ceased in 2004, but chemical, metal and organic contaminants remain in the soil requiring remediation.

A large portion of the area features a public parking lot, which was first paved in 2000. As part of the rejuvenation project, the parking lot would be scaled-down with expanded parking spaces placed in adjacent areas, including along the river.

Also in the Hydraulic District is the former Kendall County Farm Bureau building which has been used as a cold storage facility, slaughterhouse, food pantry and a meat processing facility. The city still needs to come to an agreement with the privately owned building on any cost sharing and planning for the environmental cleanup and site rejuvenation.

The city has been working with different private and public property owners over decades, along with seeking grant funding, to plan a course of action, City Administrator Bart Olson said.

“The property that encompasses the east alley (parking lot), the FS property, and portions of the Farm Bureau building, have been polluted for decades now,” Olson said during the meeting. “In order to clean the pollution and then get a no-further-remediation letter from the IEPA, the next step is to drill a bunch of wells, test the soil, the water, the air in the area, and then submit that report to the IEPA.”

Once the IEPA receives Yorkville’s report, the city will either get clearance to move the contaminated soil or clean it up further.

“At the end of this process, we should have a plan to basically develop the FS Property as we purchased it that makes it safe for public use,” Olson said.

The approved $100,000 does not include the total costs of the actual clean-up and environmental remediation solutions that will be suggested by the IEPA for the area.

The severity of environmental pollution discovered in the soil, gas and groundwater studies will determine the extent of the necessary cleanup and the timeline of the Hydraulic District’s rejuvenation project going forward.