Barring an appeal, companies entrusted with cleaning up Kerr-McGee sites across the country are going to receive the money they need to do so within weeks, including the one focused on Columbus.
In April, Anadarko, the company that bought Kerr-McGee’s major assets in 2006, settled to pay $5.15 billion to rid areas, including the wood treatment site along 14 Avenue North, of pollutants and contaminants. This was after the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York found Kerr-McGee liable for damages ranging from $5.2-$14.2 billion.
Multiple parties from Columbus appealed the April settlement, saying it wasn’t enough. The issue was taken to a bankruptcy judge in Washington, D.C., the following month. The settlement agreement was upheld.
On Monday, the U.S. Federal Court officially cleared Anadarko to pay for the cleanup. Funding to remediate the Columbus site will total more than $68 million.
The Environmental Protection Agency handed the Superfund site over to Multistate Environmental Response Trust, a trustee group of a company that cleans up Superfund sites. Multistate is managing and overseeing cleanup of 23 other Kerr-McGee sites similar to the one in Columbus.
Multistate President Cynthia Brooks said while the trust has undertaken a limited scope of sampling along some of the ditches and some of the residential yards to begin to put together a base of information about where contamination may be, receiving funds from the settlement will allow the trust to start the work it was tasked to do in earnest. Brooks said she looks for that to take place in the next two months and for the overall site investigation process to last up to two years.
“If there are no appeals, then the decision becomes final and the funds will be distributed to hazardous waste sites throughout the country that were part of the Kerr-McGee legacy companies and we will have the funding that we need to begin the site investigations that will be critical to characterizing the nature and contamination from that site,” Brooks said. “We’re very much looking forward to getting that started as soon as the funds come in. I think everybody’s eager to get this done efficiently and cost-effectively.”
Multistate is also participating in a project that will remediate chronic drainage issues along 14th Avenue. This will include transporting contaminated soils from the old ditch to the former plant site and placing a clean fill. Colom Construction will construct the new ditch and widen the roadway to include a turn lane. Funding from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is helping fund Colom Construction’s $755,394 bid for the work.
The project includes moving the ditch approximately 20 feet south of its current position along 14th Avenue North and widening the 1,700-foot-long ditch from 23rd Street to the rail line on the east side of the old Kerr-McGee plant. The new ditch will be lined with concrete. The project also includes filling in the old ditch with new dirt, widening 14th Avenue itself so it can have a turning lane with a safe shoulder and installing curbs and gutters.
The Columbus Kerr-McGee site was sealed off in 2003 after creosote was detected near the plant. The wood preservative has been linked to cancer.
Nathan Gregory covers city and county government for The Dispatch.
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