By Wally Kennedy
wkennedy@joplinglobe.com
After two years of work, the cleanup — and breakup — of the 1,792-acre Atlas Powder Co. property east of Joplin is under way.
Expert Management Inc. (EMI), a subsidiary of ICI Explosives USA, the most recent owner of the property, has sold off large parcels that were not contaminated by the chemical plant’s production of explosives for World War II.
“We started with 1,792 acres, and we’re down to under 1,000 acres,” said Donald Pawlowski, director of legacy management for ICI. “Eventually, we will get it down to roughly 583 acres. Much of that land will be the basis for the Atlas Industrial Park.”
As part of the cleanup, a multi-acre remediation project that uses microbes to break down chemicals in the soil also is under way.
That effort will make the industrial-park property marketable to commercial interests.
The site has a railroad line and is close to Interstate 44.
But, as fast as the cleanup and breakup of the plant has been, Atlas officials want to speed things along.
When Doyle Childers, director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, visited Joplin for a town-hall meeting on Jan. 5, he was asked by a member of the Atlas cleanup team why it was taking so long to process state-required reports related to the cleanup.
Childers said the agency is handling 30,000 permits per year, and that steps are being taken to streamline and automate the process. He also said he is aware that there had been delays with regard to Atlas, but was unaware that a backlog of inaction by the agency was holding up redevelopment of the property.
“We’ll look at it to see if we can do something differently. We’ll check into it,” Childers said.
Said Pawlowski: “The DNR doesn’t have enough horses to pull the wagon. The people they have do a good job and they do it properly, but there are not enough of them.”
Pawlowski said that what should take “30 days, 60 days or 90s days for the DNR to do often takes six months, nine months or 12 months. They are spread too thin to do it in time.
“I cannot progress in the environmental work to a point where I can sell property. If they were more progressive, I could be more progressive,” he said. “What they do is have seven people review it to reach a consensus instead of having one engineer do it. This would be going a lot faster if it were not for the consensus approach they are using.”
Pawlowski has offered hiring a third party — an environmental consulting firm — to do the oversight the DNR has not been able to do in a timely fashion. Pawlowski said he has had no response to the offer.
For Pawlowski and his team, time is money. The longer it takes to get the property ready for redevelopment, the more costly the project becomes for EMI. It also slows down the prospect of bringing new jobs to one of the oldest industrial sites in Southwest Missouri, a site where more than 800 people once worked to produce explosives for the Tri-State Mining District.
“We want to clean it up properly and get out of Dodge. That’s our goal,” he said. “We started this cleanup in 2005, and we want to be done by 2015.”
Pawlowski has made a deal to sell 448 acres on the north side of the plant to the East Joplin Development Co., which has ties to R&R; Trucking, of Joplin. The 448 acres was not polluted by the manufacturing process. The company wants to buy an additional 102 acres closer to the plant.
Pawlowski’s team tested the 102-acre tract and found that it can be sold because there is no evidence of contamination. That information has been provided to the DNR so that the transaction can proceed, but the DNR has not responded.
Manure rescuers
In the meantime, EMI is moving forward with a large-scale composting project in which soil contaminated with chemicals used to make the explosives is mixed with cattle manure, distiller’s grain and wood chips. The mixing is done in two large buildings at the site that were once used to store urea, an ingredient in fertilizer and explosives.
The composted material is turned and kept moist to promote bacteria growth. The manure is from the Missouri Farms Dairy, near Carthage.
“The rows of compost can generate an internal temperature of 165 degrees as the bacteria breaks down the organic material and soil,” said Glenn Moll, with EMI. “There are nine million organisms at work in one gram of compost.’’
After three weeks or so of composting, the soil is removed and spread on plant property. The company’s goal is to keep the soil on site and not ship it to a landfill. Pawlowski said there is no reason to transfer the problem to someone else.
Some of the soil that had heavy contamination was transported to the former ICI Explosives hazardous-waste incinerator for disposal. The incinerator was purchased in 2002 by EBV, a German company. Pawlowski said a relatively small amount of soil was incinerated because it is costly to do business with EBV.
Pawlowski said soil contamination in most places at the plant is about four feet deep and that about 12 acres at various sites across the plant have been contaminated from TNT production.
A perpetual deed restriction has been placed on the Atlas Industrial Park property. It can never be used for residential development. State and company officials also said the soil and groundwater underneath of the 583 acres is too contaminated to ever be used as a place to build homes, but it can be used for industrial and commercial purposes
The property has deep wells, rail service and close access to Interstate 44, Pawlowski said.
“It would be a great site to bring stuff here by rail, warehouse it and then distribute by truck on the interstate,’’ he said. “The closeness of the interstate is the key thing about this property.”
Atlas history
The Atlas property was first owned and used for manufacturing by the DuPont Co. in 1910. It became Atlas Powder Co. in 1912. The plant produced explosives for the Tri-State Mining District and other commercial uses. During World War II, TNT was produced for military purposes.
Source: ICI Explosives USA Inc.
