BIDDEFORD — Last week, Brian Phinney, the city’s environmental control officer, delivered good news to the City Council: The property at 3 Lincoln St., where the Maine Energy Recovery Co. plant sat for 25 years, is finally clean, and by this spring, it will be primed for redevelopment.

“Other than the seeding, we’re pretty much completed,” said Phinney.

In 2012, Casella Waste Systems sold MERC to the city, putting an end to the facility’s trash burning, which often deluged nearby streets with an unpleasant odor. Many consider the waste-to-energy incinerator to have been what stagnated the city’s downtown area for so many years, and for them, this sale marked a turning point in its revitalization.

The deal called for the demolition of the plant, which occurred in 2013. And since then, work at the property has focused on cleaning it up ”“ namely, ridding the site of contamination from dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which are toxic chemicals produced by industrial processes. The entire cleanup has been paid for and orchestrated by Casella.

In October 2013, the dioxins cleanup was completed and approved by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, said Phinney.

“We removed about 6 inches of top soil in that entire area,” he said. “That was basically the extent of that cleanup.”

The PCBs cleanup, on the other hand, proved more complicated. The DEP has no regulatory authority when it comes to PCBs, he said, because they fall under the federal Toxic Substances Control Act, so the city had to work with the Environmental Protection Agency for that aspect of the project. According to the EPA’s website, PCBs have been shown to cause several adverse health effects in animals, including cancer.

But as of December of last year, said Phinney, the PCBs cleanup was completed, and the city is just waiting forthe EPA’s final approval.

“I can’t see any issues that are going to come up with that,” he said.

Once the EPA signs off on the cleanup, the DEP will check to ensure everything was done to the EPA’s standards, he said, and after that, the city will receive a No Further Action Letter for the property, meaning it’s been entirely cleaned up and is ready for use.

As for what will become of the former MERC site, Phinney said the portion that was contaminated with PCBs has been cleaned up to “park standards.”

“So basically we can develop that into a park,” he said, and the initial intention for that area ”“ which is situated on the east side of the property, between the train tracks and the Saco River ”“ was to make it a part of the RiverWalk.

The rest of the property has been cleaned up to “residential standards,” said Phinney, which is the highest level of cleanup that can be performed. So although the land probably won’t be used for houses or residential units, the possibility for that will be there nonetheless, he said.

For all of the possible uses of the property, there is only one restriction: Wells for drinking water cannot be dug there. But Phinney said that’s no point for concern.

“We have public water,” he said, “so it’s really not an issue.”

In the spring, once the temperatures rise and the snow melts, that land will be seeded ”“ an appropriate symbol of the property’s forthcoming rebirth.

— Staff Writer Angelo J. Verzoni can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 329 or [email protected].