The future of a “dead zone” in one of Lawrence’s premier industrial areas is getting caught up in a political dispute, even as some of the Farmland Industries site’s most pressing environmental issues remain unclear.

Jere McElhaney, a Douglas County commissioner, said last week he was poised to push for the county to withdraw from an agreement with Lawrence City Commission to consider purchasing the idle fertilizer plant at the southeastern edge of town.

He is worried city commissioners might put too many limits on the area’s future uses, limiting what McElhaney considers needed governmental “flexibility” to attract quality jobs to a town that needs them.

“I don’t want this whole deal to hinge on the city and county being in agreement,” he said. “I don’t want to be out of the picture if the city has its own ideas. … I feel like there could be some restrictive uses — some very, very restrictive uses — that could be put in place.”

Mike Rundle, a Lawrence city commissioner, is taking McElhaney’s comments as a swipe at the success of the Progressive Lawrence Campaign. The coalition’s three candidates — Rundle, Dennis “Boog” Highberger and David Schauner — swept all three City Commission seats that were up for election April 1 after the candidates ran on a platform of encouraging “smart growth.”

‘Discriminating’ approach

“What does he want to have, a nuclear reprocessing plant?” asked Rundle, who figures McElhaney simply is “parroting the same contrived concerns” about potential development restrictions that came up during the campaign.

“He needs to define ‘flexibility.’ If he means ‘no holds barred,’ ‘it doesn’t really matter’ or ‘anything goes,’ that’s just what we’re trying to put an end to,” Rundle said. “We want to be discriminating. If we market this (land) to people, we want to put in the most productive use we can.”

The issue festers as Charles Jones, another county commissioner, continues to review the plant’s environmental conditions. At least so far, he doesn’t like what he’s seen.

Jones, after a meeting last week with Farmland representatives, said they declined to provide details about conditions at the site, which Jones considers a “dead zone” in a vital industrial area and a primary gateway to Lawrence.The lack of information prompted county commissioners to back out of a confidentiality agreement they had signed with Farmland to cover their talks about the land since so little information was being shared.

¢ County to discuss possible Farmland acquisition (4-13-03)¢ 6News video: City and county commissioners discuss the fate of the Farmland plant (3-13-03)

County commissioners still want to consider buying the plant, but they want to ensure Farmland takes responsibility for cleaning up the 467 acres north of Kansas Highway 10.

Jones said the county might intervene in Farmland’s bankruptcy case to make sure some of the proceeds from the sale of fertilizer assets are held to clean up the plant site. Of particular interest: the 179 acres along the south side of K-10 that a Lawrence development group has offered to buy for $5 million.

Otherwise, Jones said, the cooperative had a grand total of $488,000 set aside to handle what could become a multimillion-dollar cleanup job.

“Our fear is they’ll deal off the clean parts and leave us with the contaminated parts,” said Jones, former director of environment for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. “It could be there forever. It’s a real fear.”

‘It’s all negotiable’

Simply assessing the site’s environmental conditions could cost $200,000, Jones said. And while that might be covered by federal grants, only another $200,000 might be available through such grant programs to clean the site.

Sarah Schmidt, a spokeswoman for Kansas City, Mo.,-based Farmland, said the company had yet to decide how or to whom the Lawrence assets would be sold. Any such decisions would need bankruptcy court approval.

For now, it’s a wait-and-see approach when it comes to selling assets or cleaning them up.

“We don’t really have any solid contract, but we’d be open for talking to any buyer about options available and negotiating points in the contract for environmental remediation,” Schmidt said. “It’s all negotiable.”

McElhaney said the county should stay in the game for acquiring the property, which could be used to expand the county’s East Hills Business Park on the east side of the plant and the Douglas County 4-H Fairgrounds on the west side of the plant.

“We want to make sure we can get our money back in a reasonable amount of time,” he said.