photo by: Nick Krug

The former Farmland site is seen in this aerial photograph on Monday, July 1, 2013.

After turning off groundwater collection pumps and releasing millions of gallons of nitrogen-contaminated water into the Kansas River, the city has solved the immediate storage problems at the former Farmland plant. But a long-term solution for the site’s problematic cleanup is months in the making.

Water storage on the former nitrogen fertilizer plant reached capacity last year, and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment subsequently authorized the pump shut-off and river releases under certain monitoring conditions. The site’s collection pumps remain off, and since KDHE authorized the discharge in November, the city has released 32 million gallons of nitrogen water into the river, KDHE spokesman Jerry Kratochvil said in an email.

What the KDHE authorizations have done is bought the city time. Kratochvil said there is now up to three years of on-site storage, giving the city time to create and implement a new remediation plan well before capacity becomes a problem again.

The first steps of that process are underway. The city took on responsibility for handling the site’s cleanup, and Brandon McGuire, assistant to the city manager, said the city has been negotiating a contract with a consultant to work on a new remediation plan, which must be approved by KDHE. McGuire said it will take significant study before the city knows what the new plan will entail.

“(It’s) a process that will take many months, I’m sure, and will require significant study, characterization and analysis by the consultant,” McGuire said. “Until any changes are made to that consent order, the city is legally obligated to fulfill the requirements of the consent order.”

KDHE authorized the city to turn off its groundwater collection pumping systems and interceptor trench pump last summer. Kratochvil said there is not a date set at this time to turn the pumps back on. He said the city has increased well monitoring to ensure nitrogen contaminated water doesn’t migrate off the property as a result of the pump shutdown.

Increased monitoring

As part of its agreement with KDHE, the city tests samples from 10 monitoring wells and one private well northeast of the Farmland site, according to monitoring reports. Since the pump shutdown, the city has increased well monitoring from quarterly to monthly. For the past two years, nitrate and nitrite levels in the private well have typically not met drinking water standards, and a report notes that bottled water is provided to the residents for drinking water.

Some members of the public have been vocal with their concerns regarding the situation. Vice Mayor Lisa Larsen, who is a retired environmental geologist, said those concerns are valid. Larsen said anytime there is a contaminant in the environment, there are always concerns about whether it will migrate and what the impact will be on interceptors such as private wells. However, she said plumes take time to move and that the city’s monthly monitoring is “very responsible.”

“I’m concerned about it, and from what I’ve heard from the citizens, they’re concerned about it,” Larsen said. “The monitoring is an excellent tool to gauge what is going on in the environment under any circumstances, so we can get data over time that tells us is it migrating or not, and also understand the extent of the problem.”

McGuire said that no other private wells are in the area that would need to be monitored. He said to city staff’s knowledge, that property has been supplied bottled water since before the city received ownership of the former Farmland site and that the city has continued that practice. However, he said instances when the nitrogen concentration in the private well exceeded limits were “likely the result of other sources.”

Too much nitrogen in the water — a form of nutrient pollution — can cause large algae blooms that harm water quality, habitats and decrease the oxygen that fish and other aquatic animals need to survive, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. High levels of nitrates in drinking water can be harmful to humans, especially infants.

KDHE authorized the city to release up to 500,000 gallons of nitrogen water into the river per day, beginning in mid-November, according to the authorization. The authorization states that the city must cease those discharges by April 1 in order to “dampen any biological activity” from the additional nitrogen in the river. The city is also required to monitor river flow and sample levels of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate to assure it is diluted to safe levels.

McGuire said the city will continue nitrogen water releases until April 1. On Thursday, Kratochvil said approximately 32 million gallons of nitrogen water have been released into the river so far and the city has been abiding by the terms of both the KDHE authorization and its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.

Increased monitoring notwithstanding, Larsen said the public’s strong reaction to the release of nitrogen water into the river is also valid.

“It created a strong reaction within our own city (staff); that was not an option that we really wanted to do,” Larsen said. “We were in a situation where we were extremely limited on what we could do. Nobody wants to put that in the river, be it the city or our citizens.”

A new plan

The city has been using a pipeline that runs from the site to the other side of the Kansas River to distribute the nitrogen water to farmers north of Lawrence, where it can be added to fields as fertilizer. However, city staff have said storage capacity at the site became a problem after improvements to the pumping system yielded increased water and nitrogen collection at the same time that farmers were using less water from the pipe.

In letters to the city, KDHE officials rejected the city’s initial idea of trucking the nitrogen water to additional farmers and noted the possibility of chemically treating the water on-site and searching for additional options for land application. Ultimately, KDHE will have to approve any changes to the remediation contract.

For her part, Larsen said she is looking forward to getting information from the new consultant and seeing what the city can learn from a comprehensive look at the remediation system. She said there may be certain aspects that the city can phase out and new, cost-effective ways to address the contamination.

“There’s new ideas out there,” Larsen said. “…The goal obviously is to try to get the remediation done with as little additional funding as possible down the road.”

The city took ownership of the former fertilizer plant in 2010 with the plan of using part of the 467-acre site for a new business park, VenturePark. The city paid nothing for the property but accepted responsibility for cleaning up environmental issues left behind by the bankrupt plant. The city received an approximately $8.5 million trust fund that Farmland had set aside for cleanup, which city staff has said now contains about $5 million and likely won’t be enough to cover the total cost of the cleanup.

McGuire said city staff will provide a full status update on Farmland to the City Commission after April 1.