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Photo by Thad Allender

Farmland Industries, once a leader in the nation’s production of agricultural fertilizers, is now a desolate wasteland located just east of Lawrence. At a March meeting, the majority of Lawrence city commissioners said they were willing to consider assuming legal liability for cleaning the property

It isn’t easy to convert the contaminated remains of a fertilizer plant site into an employment-boosting, taxpaying business complex, but local public officials are trying.

“I think we need to move forward,” Lawrence City Commissioner Boog Highberger said of public plans to acquire the vacant Farmland Industries site.

The 467-acre plant east of Lawrence on Kansas Highway 10 has been environmentally damaged by decades of fertilizer contamination. The site closed several years ago and is now controlled by a bankruptcy trust.

At a March meeting, the majority of city commissioners said they are willing to consider assuming legal liability for cleaning the property if necessary to move ahead with plans to transform the property that stands as a blighted entrance to visitors coming into the city.

“I think we’ve got some serious need for industrial land,” commissioner Sue Hack said at the meeting. “We know that. Our inventory is extremely low.”

In July, city commissioners signed off on a bid for the site that would have required the existing bankruptcy trust that oversees the property to continue being legally responsible for the environmental cleanup. Under that plan, commissioners were confident the city would be protected from a costly environmental cleanup that could result from finding unexpected contaminants on the property.

But regulators with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment voiced concerns about the city’s plan. John Mitchell, interim director of the environment for KDHE, said having the city take over cleanup efforts would be a better scenario than leaving that role to a private trust, which will not be required to continue the cleanup after the $5.2 million trust fund is depleted.

Mitchell gave a report on the property to the commission at the March meeting. He said the principal contaminate is nitrate, which can be converted to the toxic nitrite in the stomachs of mammals.

Currently, the bankruptcy trust is pumping nitrogen-contaminated water from the site and transporting it via pipeline to North Lawrence, where it is used as a fertilizer on farm fields. That process or a similar one may have to continue for up to 30 years, according to KDHE analysis. That’s one reason why KDHE thinks the city, rather than the trust, should be responsible for the cleanup.

Mitchell said a newly recognized buried landfill area on the site also holds contaminants. KDHE regulators say the landfill likely won’t need to be cleaned, but rather agreements will have to be made that the site won’t be disturbed.

It could, perhaps, be paved over and used for parking, Mitchell said.

Some commissioners did voice concerns about the potential unknowns.

“The landfill kind of coming up at the list minute is very, very disconcerting,” Commissioner Rob Chestnut said.

Hack voiced similar fears.

“I am concerned about the liability — both the known and the unknown,” she said. “If more areas show up as we’re moving forward, that’s a pretty scary concept.”

Mitchell said he thinks it’s likely that the property could be cleaned up with the remaining $5.2 million in the trust fund, but he could not guarantee that. He also could not reassure the commission that further investigation of the site wouldn’t uncover new contamination problems, but he said the agency would work with the city as it considers its next step.

“We would be happy to work with the city to better delineate the problems and the risks of the Farmland facility,” he said. “If this is something that the city is serious about, we’d be anxious to work with you all to facilitate your movement forward.”