Excerpt from the Brunswick Beacon, February 27, 2018. Read the full article here.
by Brian Slattery
NAVASSA — Navassa residents, their neighbors and stakeholders in the area laid out their vision for developing the Kerr-McGee Superfund site, once the property is cleaned up, at a community vision workshop Feb. 23-24.
Representatives of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ) and the Multistate Environmental Response Trust (Multistate Trust), three groups leading the cleanup process, hosted the meetings at Navassa Community Center.
The community vision planning sessions offered residents, community leaders, business owners and other community stakeholders a chance to brainstorm ideas for reusing the site. They led to participants creating two or three draft concept plans for redevelopment of the property.
The site was used for a wood treatment plant for more than 40 years before the Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp., the last owner, shut the plant down in 1980.
Creosote and sludge left on the site led the EPA to designate the property a Superfund site in 2010.
In 2015, a $5.15 billion environmental settlement with Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which purchased the site from Kerr-McGee in 2005, was reached that provided $92 million for the cleanup of the plant site and $23 million for the restoration of the land and waterway in the surrounding area.
The project began in August 2015. Since then, more than 500 soil, groundwater, wells and sediment samples were taken around the wood treatment plant processing and storage areas, evaporation and wastewater ponds, and two drainage swales that ran from the plant toward the Brunswick River.
Richard Elliott, project manager for the Multistate Trust, said most of the creosote measured in the samples was found along the west side of the property, especially in the southwest corner where the processing area was located.