FARGO - Xcel Energy will be doing a lot of digging this summer at the site of its old manufactured gas plant downtown, which mostly means a lot of trucks hauling away tar-soaked soil and other contaminants, company officials said.

Mark Nisbet, Xcel's principal manager for North Dakota, said the company has agreed to buy the 2-acre site at 11 12th St. N. by NP Avenue and home to the Heartland apartment complex.

The plan is to demolish the apartments, remove contaminated soil, replace with new soil and monitor for any contaminants, he said.

Eventually, Xcel would sell the land back to a developer, he said. NP is a key corridor to the Red River and is ripe for further development, he said.

Excavation is scheduled to begin in late June with workers on site from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every weekday. Xcel will cover the site with a large tent to minimize the smell of tar and equipment to decontaminate any water workers encounter. By October, the company expects to fill the hole with new soil and reseed the site.

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The manufactured gas plant on the western edge of downtown used coal to produce gas for heating and lighting from 1885 until 1960, when natural gas became widely available. Xcel's predecessor bought the plant around 1910, the company said.

The plant was long ago razed, replaced in 1969 with the Heartland apartments. But some structures, such as the plant's foundation and pipes, remained underground along with coal tar and other byproducts of gas manufacturing.

When the city rebuilt NP Avenue in 2015, Xcel was asked to clean up what was left. In the process, the company discovered that contaminants remained under the street and on the site itself.

As Xcel cleans up what's left on-site this summer, the city will be doing work on 12th Street North, allowing the company to access ground beneath the street.

The Environmental Protection Agency had earlier concluded the site is safe for the general public, Nisbet said, but not so much for construction workers if they're doing any digging in the area. If the site is to ever be redeveloped, Xcel has to clean it up.

Nisbet said the soil will be hauled to an industrial landfill in Becker, Minn., about 200 miles by road from Fargo.

Xcel had sought $2 million in tax incentives from the city in March to pay for the cleanup, which city staff estimated could increase the value of the site from $2.9 million to $20 million when redeveloped. The company has since pulled that application because it doesn't know yet when it would make the property available to developers, Nisbet said.