Mayor says city found no evidence of landfill or methane risk at Riverside Park bandshell

A pair of residents raised concerns at a recent meeting that the newly built bandshell at Riverside Park might sit on a landfill and that a seal could have been broken, creating a risk of methane release.

Mayor Chuck Bradford told council members the city had "reached out to the City’s legal team, Dodge County, Construction Management Services and also consulted the Minnesota Pollution Control’s website." He said the available records show "there is no documented landfill on that site, more importantly, nothing was ever documented as having been capped. So, even if there was a small landfill there at one time, it would have been so long ago and was not capped so there is no risk of methane release." Bradford also said Construction Management Services inspected the site "before, during, and after and there were no concerns or notes of anything that should not have been in the ground there." He characterized the city’s due diligence as complete and said, "As far as I am concerned, this matter is closed. There is no liability for the City and we have done what we need to do concerning this topic."

The minutes record this as a response to resident concern; no testing results, soil sampling data, or formal third-party written reports were entered into the minutes. The city referenced state Pollution Control Agency records and an inspection by the contractor but did not note any subsequent monitoring, follow-up testing, or an independent environmental study in the meeting transcript.