Luzerne Council members remember Bill Turcan

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Wyoming Valley’s brush fire season is here

PITTSTON TWP. &#8212; The first phase of demolishing the old terminal at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport should begin next month with the expected awarding of a contract today. Sargent Enterprises Inc. of Jim Thorpe submitted the apparent low bid of $414,686 last week for the environmental remediation work. A total of four contractors responded to the invitation for bids and Brian Sargent described them as &#8220;very competitive.&#8221;Sargent said Wednesday that he has been in contact with the airport and expects the Bi-County Airport Board for Lackawanna and Luzerne Counties to award the contract at its regularly scheduled meeting today.&#8220;All indications are that it is moving forward,&#8221; Sargent said.The targeted start date is May 18.&#8220;The bulk of the work is the removal of all the environmental hazards in the building,&#8221; he said.The building contains &#8220;significant amount of asbestos&#8221; that was either sprayed of troweled onto the structural steel and on the piping, Sargent added.A security fence also will be installed and left in place for the demolition that will be bid out separately. Sargent said his company will bid on that as well.The remediation phase will take 75 days to complete, airport director Carl Beardsley said.The airport estimated the overall demolition cost at $2.1 million and will be paid for by a combination of state and airport funds. The building has been empty since 2012 when the Federal Aviation Administration moved to a new control tower across the airfield.The nearly 10-year-old Joseph M. McDade Terminal, constructed at a cost of more than $41 million replaced the smaller terminal that opened in 1959. Once cleared, the site will be used for additional parking for aircraft.

Low bidder for Wilkes-Barre/Scranton airport terminal demo ready to go on project