Excerpt from the Commercial Dispatch. Read entire article here.
By Isabelle Altman, August 6, 2020
The Environmental Protection Agency has released proposed plans for removing contaminated soil from 11 private properties around the former Kerr-McGee plant on 14th Avenue North, as part of the ongoing cleanup process at the old industrial site.
The properties are mostly residential and located primarily in the area of Shady and Moss streets east of the main site, though there are some in the area of 20th Street North. The property owners have already been notified and met with representatives from EPA and the Greenfield Environmental Multi-State Trust, which is overseeing the clean-up process.
"The plan is to remove, for most of the properties, only the top foot of soil," said Lauri Gorton, director of environmental programs and senior strategist at the Greenfield Trust.
The estimated $2.7 million project is the next part of the multi-step clean-up process for the 90-acre Kerr-McGee site and surrounding area. Kerr-McGee operated a wood-treatment plant at the site from 1928 to 2003, by which time the pollutant creosote, which is used to treat wood, had contaminated the plant site and surrounding area. EPA declared the site a Superfund site, designating it a priority area for clean-up along with about 30 other polluted sites around the country, and designated $68 million for clean-up.
EPA investigators took soil samples from approximately 100 residential and commercial properties around the site and found only the 11 properties specified in the plan had levels of contamination requiring clean-up -- levels which Gorton said are set "pretty conservatively." Remedial Project Manager Charles King said for most of those properties, soil will be removed and taken to the former Kerr-McGee site because the chemical levels are low enough that they are considered appropriate for industrial sites.