Work is well underway in preparation for Komatsu Mining Corp.’s new headquarters and manufacturing facility in Milwaukee’s Harbor District.
Crews are cleaning up the roughly 46-acre We Energies-owned Solvay Coke site at 311 E. Greenfield Ave., where Komatsu’s manufacturing facility will be constructed. An office and museum will also be built on a 13.5-acre city-owned site.
Brendan Conway, a We Energies spokesman, said the cleanup work on the Solvay Coke site involves excavation of possible contaminated soil and material containing asbestos, removal of piping and installation of a groundwater monitoring well network.
The parcel was home to many companies over the past century, including two We Energies-owned utilities, Wisconsin Gas and Wisconsin Electric, Conway said. We Energies bought the site in 2017 to minimize risks associated with the contaminated parcel.
We Energies hopes to have substantial remediation work done by the end of the year and turn over the site to Komatsu in the first quarter of 2020, he said.
