Kansas Department of Health and Environment leaders are close to having a formal plan to clean up the former Farmland Industries fertilizer plant east of Lawrence.

But still unknown is exactly who all the players will be.

KDHE on Wednesday closed a 30-day public comment period on the draft cleanup plan for the nearly 500-acre property. KDHE officials expect that a final cleanup plan can be filed in 60 to 90 days, which they hope will spur more interest in parties wanting to redevelop the site into a commercial or industrial project.

“Anybody interested in purchasing the property will now know what our expectations are for cleaning up the property,” said Rick Bean, the KDHE section chief that is overseeing the cleanup plan.

But the plan also spells out what has long been thought — there are more clean-up costs than there is money set aside in a bankruptcy trust fund designed to pay for cleanup expenses.

The new report — called a Corrective Action Decision — estimates that total clean-up of the property will cost $13 million over a 30-year period.

The cleanup trust fund has about $4 million in it. An administrative trust fund has about $6 million in it, but it is unclear how much of that money can be used for cleanup purposes.

City Manager David Corliss confirmed the city is in discussions with the bankruptcy trust and KDHE to win a ruling that would allow the administrative trust fund money to be used for cleanup activities. The city has long expressed an interest in purchasing the property to use as a future business park, but Corliss said the city wants access to all the trust fund money it can get to pay for the cleanup.

The issue over the administrative trust fund money has become more complicated after an Overland Park based investment group, Capitana Redevelopment Group, purchased a legal interest in the administrative trust fund. The leader of that group previously has said he does not believe the entire administrative trust fund can be used for cleanup work.

The new KDHE plan doesn’t clear the issue up. Instead, the plan simply acknowledges that some of the clean-up work likely won’t be able to happen until a third-party steps up to purchase the property.

The plan, though, does prioritize what clean-up work needs to be done first. KDHE leaders said they are confident that there is enough money set aside for the project to ensure that contamination on the site does not spread.

“The priority is to ensure that the public is protected,” said Gary Blackburn, KDHE’s director of environmental remediation. “This plan will allow us to do that.”

As expected, the plan identified the major pollutants at the site to be high levels of nitrogen and ammonia that have contaminated the soil and groundwater.