It’s been 21 months since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set aside funds for the clean-up on the old Kerr-McGee facility in Columbus. Officials said it would be a long, painstaking process.
The good news is that the process has reached a couple of important milestones in an effort that make take years to complete.
“We have identified all the areas that we want to sample,” Lauri Gorton, environmental programs manager for Greenfield Environmental Trust Group, said Wednesday. “We’ve achieved two things we wanted to get done. The first was the 14th Avenue ditch project, which is finished. The second thing is after meeting with former employees and residents, we have determined the sites we want to sample, not only on the Kerr-McGee site itself but in the adjoining areas where they might be a contamination problem. We are waiting for the EPA and the Department of Environmental Quality to finish reviewing those sites. Once we get their approval, we’ll begin field testing…we believe we will be able to start the drilling operations for those samples in November.”
In April 2014, the EPA designated $68 million in funds to clean up the 90-acre Kerr-McGee site in Columbus, which was shut down in 2003, as well as other parcels in the city where creosote, a carcinogen, was located at higher than safe levels. The funds were part of a $5.15 billion settlement between the federal government and Anardarko Petroleum Group, which had purchased the now-defunct Kerr-McGee facilities.
Greenfield Environmental Trust Group was brought in to conduct environmental studies and clean up of the affected property, primarily at the site of the old Kerr-McGee plant on 14th Avenue North. At the time, Cynthia Brooks, owner of the group, estimated it would take 18-to-24 months to complete the assessment.
“I do feel like we are making good progress,” Gorton said, although she said, at this stage, it is difficult to predict when actual clean-up operations will begin. “There are a lot of factors that affect that – a lot depends on what we find in the samples. Are there exposure or containment issues at any of the sites? Once we get the analytical reports, we’ll have a much better idea of the time-table. We have done some clean-up work already, but right now, I’d say a best-case for the start of the major part of the clean-up probably won’t come until early 2017.
Gorton says she meets with community members once a month — on the fourth Tuesday of every month at 6 p.m. at the Municipal Complex — to update them on the project’s progress.
“We encourage people to come out to the meetings because this really is something we are doing with the community,” she said. “We want everyone to be informed.”
The $68 million in funds is designated solely for clean-up and rehabilitation of the affected areas. A separate trust has been established to deal only with claims from people who have experienced injury or sickness as a result of exposure to the creosote. The Tronox Tort Trust is receiving $618 million to pay claims to those who have experienced these affects at all the affected sites in the country. A hotline (800-753-2480) and email address ([email protected]) have been set up to guide those affected on how their claims can be processed.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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