About 30 acres of the 44-acre Pine Yard at the old Kerr-McGee plant near 14 Avenue North will soon be marketed for commercial redevelopment, representatives with the Greenfield Multistate Environmental Trust said Thursday evening during a town hall meeting with Columbus residents.
Trust and Environmental Protection Agency representatives updated about 30 attendees at the Dream Center on cleanup efforts and the redevelopment process for the old railroad cross-tie plant property, which the EPA declared a Superfund site in 2015 due to creosote contamination in the ground.
The Greenfield Trust received $67 million from a court settlement for cleanup efforts at the site.
Claire Woods, director for environmental justice with the Greenfield Trust, said the Pine Yard — located across the street from where the plant was — would be marketed through a listing agent or an open bidding process. A list price has not yet been determined. Any plans for redevelopment would be subject for review.
“When we do get the development plans, we’ll be able to look at those and compare them to what the community has asked for and see if they line up,” Woods said.
The Trust has held a series of redevelopment interest meetings with the community since 2018 to see what residents wanted to go into the site once cleanup efforts are complete. Survey results presented at the town hall meeting Thursday showed residents’ two most popular options were a health clinic or an adult education center.
Kerr-McGee operated a wood-treatment plant at the site from 1928 to 2003, by which time the pollutant creosote, which is used to treat wood, had contaminated the plant site and surrounding area. Creosote can cause skin and eye irritation, stomach pains, liver or kidney problems and possibly cancer according to the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Cleanup efforts
As of January, the Trust has spent $35.4 million on cleanup efforts, which have included, among other things, excavating and removing contaminated soil. Most of that has been spent on the Pine Yard and residential property surrounding the plant.
The plant site, where soil contamination was too deep for removal by excavation, still needs extensive cleanup, Woods said. A study is currently being conducted on the plant using phytoremediation, the method of growing trees to soak up the creosote contamination from the groundwater and soil.
The remaining Trust money will be used for cleanup efforts at the plant site and seeding the Pine Yard for grass, Woods said. Money from the sale of the first 30 acres of the Pine Yard may be needed to complete cleanup.
The Trust submitted alternative cleanup strategies for the main plant site to the EPA to work in conjunction with the study to remove creosote from the ground and water supply using excavation, containment and treatment technologies. The EPA is expected to come to a closing decision on the best path forward by the end of this year.
“Our hope and goal, based on the preliminary indications, is that the trees are doing what we think they will do, they are reducing the groundwater table,” EPA Remedial Project Manager Charles King said. “They are connecting with contaminated groundwater and within the next year or so we will have more data.”
During the meeting, residents weighed in on the issue of flooding in neighborhoods on the western border of the Pine Yard along 27th Street North. The Trust removed the contaminated soil from stormwater ditches and put in concrete liners on 14th and Seventh avenues and between Moss Street and Waterworks Road. Residents living there asked if the EPA could do anything about the flooding.
Director of Environmental Programs Lauri Gorton told them the Trust and EPA tested for soil contamination in those areas but found none, leaving it unable to help remedy the flooding.
“We sampled around that area and we did not find any soil or sediment contamination in those ditches that were above a cleanup level that would have driven the cleanup,” Gorton said.
The future of J5’s contract
Woods also addressed J5 Global’s relationship with the project following the June arrest of company heads Jabari Edwards and Antwann Richardson on federal charges of misusing Paycheck Protection Program funds it received for COVID-19 economic relief.
The Trust contracted with J5 to aid in the cleanup efforts. Woods said the company itself has not been linked to the fraud and will continue to work through its contract term through the end of 2022. The Trust will decide at that time whether to renew the contract for another year, she said.
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