Excerpt from Springfield News-Leader, September 14, 2016. Read the full article here.
Representatives from a group tasked with cleaning up a contaminated northwest Springfield industrial site said Wednesday they are planning to do more testing beyond the property line as they try to determine how much of the area has been affected.
The Greenfield Environmental Trust Group — which is responsible for cleaning up the site of the old Kerr-McGee railroad tie plant — held its first public meeting in Springfield on Wednesday at the Library Station on Kansas Expressway.
In front of a crowd of about 30 people, members of the group discussed how they plan to use the $22 million they were given as part of a federal settlement to clean up the property at 2800 W. High St.
Amber Igoe, assistant project manager, said part of the plan — which has been approved by the Springfield City Council — is to install eight new wells in the public rights of way to test ground water outside of the plant's property line for contamination.
There are existing wells that the multistate trust group has already been sampling for years, but the group's Vice President Marc Weinreich said this will give the group a better understanding of how far out some of the contamination might go.
"There has been extensive work done on this site for quite some time," Weinreich said. "What our job is as the multistate trust is to evaluate the effectiveness of what has already been done. And to the extent that we find it needs to be enhanced — or a big word 'optimized' — to take those actions."