Wal-Mart Abandons Kilbuck, Penn. Site

Wal-Mart Scraps Pittsburgh-Area Store [Forbes]

Wal-Mart will not build a store at a suburban hilltop construction site where a massive landslide last year closed a busy highway for two weeks, the retailer announced Wednesday.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said in a statement that it will return the hilltop in Kilbuck Township “to a predevelopment, natural sloping condition that includes trees and vegetation.”

Officials from Wal-Mart and the state Department of Environmental Protection met Tuesday to discuss the revised plan. In August, the department said Wal-Mart’s stabilization plan was incomplete. Wal-Mart has been trying to devise a plan that would stabilize the hillside to prevent another landslide.

Part of the site gave way Sept. 19, 2006, sending some 500,000 cubic yards of dirt and debris onto Route 65 and railway tracks below. One lane of the highway, a major artery to Pittsburgh’s western suburbs, remains closed.

“We’re happy to see that Wal-Mart has chosen to put the safety of the community first and we look forward to receiving the company’s revised stabilization plan,” the state department’s regional director, Kenneth Bowman, said in a statement.

The revised plan includes creating a 40 to 45-foot soil stability slope from the rock cliff, and two 25-foot walls on the back of the property instead of one 60-foot wall, the company said.

Wal-Mart took control of the entire development site in March.

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, September 27, 2007

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