As an environmental engineer, Bob Peschel has been hired to handle everything from designing and building a bike-and-hike trail along the Milwaukee River to overseeing the emergency response team cleaning up a PCB spill.

Peschel’s latest project was managing the “deconstruction” last month of the former Matt Rech gasoline and service station that straddled the Shorewood and Whitefish Bay border. By deconstructing the station, virtually all bricks, pipes, equipment, concrete, shingles and wiring used to build the station in the early 1960s were recycled.

Deconstruction of a structure is the alternative to demolition and depositing the debris in a landfill, said Peschel, who works for The Sigma Group, Inc., Milwaukee.