Excerpt from the Columbus Packet, April 3, 2017. Read the full article here.
COLUMBUS – The Greenfield Multistate Environmental Trust held a meeting Monday evening to brief residents about investigation and cleanup efforts at the former Kerr-McGee plant site.
The Greenfield Trust is overseeing the cleanup work and eventual rehabilitation of the site, which is located off of 14th Avenue North in Columbus. It began operations in the 1920s as a wood treatment plant. Creosote used in the treatment process was allowed to drip onto the ground, and flowed through open-air ditches that passed through nearby neighborhoods. There was also air pollution by toxic fumes from the treatment process.
The Environmental Protection Agency eventually designated the facility as a Superfund site. The trust has taken hundreds of soil and water samples from the site and the surrounding neighborhoods, and expects to continue cleanup and remediation efforts.
Multistate Trust Project Manager Lauri Gorton briefed the large crowd on the trust’s preliminary findings and fielded questions.
“We are a small private company,” she said. “We are not EPA contractors, and we do not work for the state. We are a court-appointed trustee, and our only job is to take the money that came out of the settlement agreement and own and manage the former Kerr-McGee site.”