Festival grounds excavation targets gas plant that first lit city
That constant stream of dump trucks cycling in and out of the Oktoberfest grounds for the past two months are a vestige of the industry that brought La Crosse into the modern era.
Crews have been digging up to 14 feet below the surface in an effort to remove some 35,000 tons of contaminated soil from the site between Copeland Avenue and the fest grounds.
The $4 million project is Xcel Energy’s fourth attempt to clean up the former manufactured gas plant site that was lighting city homes while soldiers were off fighting the Civil War.
The site is one of hundreds across the nation contaminated by the production of manufactured coal gas from the late 1800s through the 1950s.
Before the widespread use of natural gas, cities were generally supplied by local plants, which produced gas by heating bituminous coal in “retort” ovens.
The main byproduct — coke — was sold as fuel, but the plants also produced billions of tons of coal tar, which initially was dumped on the site along with the ash and other waste, said Doug Joseph, a hydro geologist who’s overseen the remediation for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
By the turn of the century, scientists had discovered other uses for coal tar, but other waste continued to accumulate, including wood chips contaminated with lead, cyanide and arsenic.
“What we’re digging up today is the remnants of that process,” Joseph said.
The contaminated soils are being hauled to a landfill in Eau Claire and replaced with clean sands, said Xcel spokesman Brian Elwood.
Major excavation work is expected to wrap up Friday, though Elwood said crews will likely do some backfilling next week.
Additional excavation in the trail area and Second Street entrance is scheduled to resume the week of April 14.
Still, Doug Kratt, president of the Oktoberfest board, said the Between the Bluffs beer, wine and cheese festival will take place as scheduled April 26, as will Weinerfest in May, though both may be in a different part of the grounds.
The remediation project also required the demolition of the Oktoberfest beer hall and two smaller pavilions.
Xcel agreed to pay reconstruction costs, but Kratt said the board will not finalize plans for new facilities until it has a new lease with JAWCC, which owns the fairgrounds.
Kratt said he expected to reach an agreement in the next two weeks, but this year’s festival will take place under tents.
The town gas era
Before the age of Edison, gas lit the city.
La Crosse got its first street lights in 1861, when the common council had kerosene lamps put atop posts at the main downtown intersections, according to Albert Sanford’s book “A History of La Crosse, Wisconsin: 1841 to 1900.”
Up till then, anyone who went out at night had to carry a lantern.
The La Crosse Gas Co. began production that same year, supplying gas to light private homes. In those days, wood — plentiful in a town where lumber was the main industry — fueled most stoves.
It was one of the first manufactured gas plants in the state, Joseph said. There was a clamor for the brighter-burning gas streetlights, but those were not installed until 1869.
In rough frontier towns like La Crosse, Joseph said, it was revolutionary.
“Once the gas lights were turned on, people began to go out in the evenings,” Joseph said. Instead of sleeping 10 hours a night, they slept eight; “nothing had changed for centuries. It was truly remarkable.”
Electricity came along in 1881, when the Brush Electric Light Co. built a power station with four dynamos at Second and Badger streets and secured a contract to supply the city with electric arc lamps.
The first were erected in February 1882 on Main Street.
“The night was dark, and the three Main street lamps, situated at a distance of one block from each other, gave forth their light with splendid effect,” read the notice in the La Crosse Republican and Leader. “There was a large crowd out to witness the result of the enterprise.”
Those lights caught the attention of novelist Mark Twain, who passed through in May of that year aboard a riverboat bound for St. Paul.
“Here is a town of twelve or thirteen thousand population, with electric lighted streets, and with blocks of buildings which are stately enough, and also architecturally fine enough, to command respect in any city,” Twain wrote of La Crosse in his book “Life on the Mississippi.”
The 150-foot towers — four in all — worked until the city trees grew too tall and they began to cast shadows.
Still, the furnaces kept burning at the gas works, which found new markets in home heating and cooking.
According to Sanford’s history, the company initially supplied customers with gas stoves until the new technology caught on. But by 1905, the lumber industry had collapsed and with it the plentiful supply of cheap fuel.
The gas works changed hands a couple of times — Charles Dawes, who served as vice president under Calvin Coolidge, was a part owner for a time — before it was purchased by one of the two electric companies.
By 1923, when Northern States Power acquired the plant as part of its purchase of Wisconsin-Minnesota Light and Power Co., the gas works was pumping out 135 million cubic feet of gas each year to more than 5,600 customers.
More than 1,500 sites
There’s no definitive list of former manufactured gas plants, said Allen Hatheway, a geological engineer and author of a book on gaswork site remediation.
A 1985 EPA report estimated there were more than 1,500 such sites nationwide.
“Because of the large size of this industry,” the report read, “this may be one of the largest generic sources of waste.”
The La Crosse gas works continued operation until the arrival of a natural gas pipeline in 1960.
Though the plant was dismantled, the coal tar remained under the four-acre site until 1988, when NSP undertook its first remediation. More tar-contaminated soil was removed during subsequent excavations in 2001 and 2004.
But whenever he was near the site, Joseph noticed a faint odor of mothballs.
“We pretty much thought we were done, but there was always an odor on the bike trail,” Joseph said. “It just wasn’t right. We’d missed something.”
The remaining contaminants, Joseph said, include forms of cyanide, lead and arsenic that are not acutely dangerous but can cause cancer through long-term exposure.
The DNR is concerned about the chemicals leaching into groundwater, though there are no wells in the area.
“Nobody’s drinking it,” Joseph said. “It’s just best to have them removed and replaced with clean soils, especially in town.”
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