Project to bring Wawa to Scranton waits on environmental cleanup of soil at South Side site

SCRANTON — A project to bring a Wawa to the city waits on environmental cleanup of contaminated soil at the site in South Side.

The soil must be removed from the former industrial tract before a gas station and convenience store can be constructed there, according to recent public notices in The Times-Tribune.

Developers of the project also have applied to the city for a permit to excavate and remove a total of 85 tons of soil from two small "hot spots" of contamination.

The permit application also shows an Aldi grocery store would be constructed on the site.

It's not clear when soil remediation or construction of either a Wawa or Aldi might start. Efforts to reach the project developer Tuesday were unsuccessful.

The project to bring a Wawa to Scranton has been in the works for over two years.

In summer 2022, NDA Moosic LLC of Vestal, New York, received Scranton zoning approval for a Wawa on the 5-acre site at 1130-36 Moosic St. and 117 Meadow Ave., as well as a then-unidentified grocery store on a rear portion of the property.

The plan calls for a 6,049-square-foot Wawa off Moosic Street, in an area behind a vacant building at 1130 Moosic St. that years ago was a Profera's Pizza and later Electric City Hot Yoga. This building would get demolished to make way for Wawa gas tanks and a canopy along Moosic Street.

The site of a future Wawa in Scranton on Moosic Street near Meadow Avenue. JIM LOCKWOOD/STAFF PHOTO

The project also would bring a 17,746-square-foot grocery store on the rear portion of the property, near the ANZ Hotel off Meadow Avenue.

Following a zoning hearing in April 2024 regarding a setback for a grocery store at the site, an engineer for the project said the developer hoped to break ground in summer 2024 and complete construction of the Wawa around summer 2025.

Summer came and went with no ground broken.

On Nov. 5, NDA Moosic had two separate, but similar, public notices published in the newspaper stating the property was found to have been contaminated with arsenic and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are a group of chemicals that occur naturally in coal, crude oil and gasoline and in combustion byproducts of coal, wood, gas, oil and other substances.

The notices say the firm notified the state Department of Environmental Protection about the polluted soil and intent to remediate it. That would involve excavation of contaminated soil and transporting it off site for disposal.

According to a remediation proposal in the permit application, the two 'hot spots' of contaminated dirt include the following: a section with arsenic that has a dimension of 15 feet by 17 feet by 41⁄2 feet that would amount to 65 tons dug up; and a PAH patch of 10 by 10 by 31⁄2 feet that would generate 20 tons of excavated soil.

The contaminated soils would be stockpiled on site pending waste classification and approval for disposal off site, and the hot spot holes would be filled with stone.

The Wawa project in Scranton was the first one proposed in Lackawanna County and that has received approval by a municipality. In September, Carbondale Twp. passed variances advancing a plan for a Wawa there. Dickson City also has received interest in recent months from a developer to put a Wawa in the borough.

The initiatives in Scranton, Carbondale Twp. and Dickson City are the first pushes for the South Pennsylvania-based Wawa chain in Lackawanna County, where rival Sheetz already has several locations.

Wawa's current northernmost location is in Mount Pocono in Monroe County.

Wawa currently has more than 1,050 convenience stores, with 850 offering gasoline, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Florida, Alabama, North Carolina and Washington D.C., according to a company fact sheet.

Wawa prefers sites that have nearby residential and working populations, traffic counts of at least 25,000 vehicles per day and about 2 acres of land that could accommodate a building of about 4,000 to 6,000 square feet, parking for 50 to 60 cars and eight fuel dispensers.