Group cleaning up contaminated Springfield site plans more testing

Representatives from a group tasked with cleaning up a contaminated northwest Springfield industrial site said Wednesday they are planning to do more testing beyond the property line as they try to determine how much of the area has been affected.

The Greenfield Environmental Trust Group — which is responsible for cleaning up the site of the old Kerr-McGee railroad tie plant — held its first public meeting in Springfield on Wednesday at the Library Station on Kansas Expressway.

In front of a crowd of about 30 people, members of the group discussed how they plan to use the $22 million they were given as part of a federal settlement to clean up the property at 2800 W. High St.

Amber Igoe, assistant project manager, said part of the plan — which has been approved by the Springfield City Council — is to install eight new wells in the public rights of way to test ground water outside of the plant's property line for contamination.

There are existing wells that the multistate trust group has already been sampling for years, but the group's Vice President Marc Weinreich said this will give the group a better understanding of how far out some of the contamination might go.

"There has been extensive work done on this site for quite some time," Weinreich said. "What our job is as the multistate trust is to evaluate the effectiveness of what has already been done. And to the extent that we find it needs to be enhanced — or a big word 'optimized' — to take those actions."

The old Kerr-McGee property is polluted with creosote, a byproduct of coal tar that was used to coat railroad ties. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies it as a possible human carcinogen.

Several citizens who live in the area said at Wednesday's meeting that they or their neighbors have been diagnosed with cancer.

The citizens expressed concerns that the creosote might be behind their illnesses, but they didn't get many answers.

Weinreich said he couldn't say definitively whether or not the contaminated plant was responsible for any illnesses. And he said the Greenfield Environmental Trust Group cannot spend any of its money on personal injury or health claims.

Those cases, Weinreich said, must be taken up with a different trust.

A representative from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services said citizens who are concerned they might have gotten cancer because of the contaminated plant can contact the Bureau of Cancer Control at 573-522-2848.

The $22 million being used to clean up the old Kerr-McGee site in Springfield is part of a $5.14 billion national bankruptcy settlement.

The Springfield plant began operating in 1907 as American Creosote Co. and was purchased by Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. In 1965, an estimated 900,000 railroad ties a year were treated with creosote at the plant, which closed and was decommissioned in 2004.

Stories in the News-Leader's archives mention the "creosote-laden soil and sludge" left behind on the property, as well as reports of creosote leaks that contaminated a nearby spring and disrupted operations at the city's Northwest Sewage Treatment Plant.

Not long after the closure of the Springfield facility, Kerr-McGee spun off some of its operations — as well as the responsibility of paying for most of its accumulated environmental damages — into a separate company, called Tronox. Tronox filed for bankruptcy in 2009, while Kerr-McGee's more profitable assets were sold to a third company, Anadarko.

Investors and federal authorities cried foul, however, and took legal action to force Andarko to help pay for the cleanup of thousands of sites that had been contaminated by Kerr-McGee's operations. In addition to creosote contamination at wood-treating plants in the East, Midwest and South, the company polluted Lake Mead in Nevada with rocket fuel and left behind radioactive waste in Navajo Nation territory, according to the Associated Press.

The Greenfield Environmental Trust Group plans to have another public meeting in 2017 to update Springfield residents on the cleanup effort.