‘The site is clean’: Former Kerr-McGee property in West Chicago declared safe to start park project

With a decades-long environmental cleanup nearing completion at the former Kerr-McGee factory site in West Chicago, city officials are looking ahead to the next chapter for the notorious property.

Earlier this month, the West Chicago City Council agreed to spend roughly $1.1 million to hire a construction company to begin work on a northern section of the property as part of a larger project to transform the entire 43-acre site into a new park.

Meanwhile, officials recently held an informational meeting to provide an update on the cleanup effort.

“This work that has been done over more than three decades has cleared the way for us to be able to make this a space that will be for the benefit of the community,” West Chicago Mayor Daniel Bovey said.

Deepak Bhojwani, administrator for the West Chicago Environmental Response Trust that is overseeing the cleanup, says the site at 800 Weyrauch St. no longer poses a health risk.

“Nothing is dangerous here,” said Bhojwani, adding that two parcels have already been leased to the city to begin the park project.

Remediation efforts will continue at three locations on the property until late 2027 or early 2028, when the entire site is expected to be released to the city.

“This site is clean right now,” Bhojwani said. “We can leave right now and have no issues. But we are taking it one step further to make it more clean.”

The former factory

While the property is largely vacant, it once housed a factory that produced radioactive elements such as thorium, radium and uranium, along with gas lantern mantles, for private entities and federal atomic energy programs, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The process created a sandlike material that the factory made available for free to residents for landscaping and building projects. In addition, a storm sewer from the factory site carried thorium to nearby Kress Creek and the West Branch of the DuPage River.

“Over several decades, before the health risks associated with radioactive materials were generally recognized, the mill tailings were available for use as free fill material by residents and contractors,” the EPA said in a 2003 report.

Thorium is linked to an increased risk of cancer.

Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp., which bought the factory in 1967 and closed it in 1973, started a massive cleanup in the mid-1980s to remove thorium from area waterways, hundreds of individual residential properties, Reed-Keppler Park and a wastewater treatment plant.

David Carlson, a West Chicago resident who serves on the West Chicago Environmental Commission, owns one of the residential properties that were part of the cleanup.

Carlson, a geologist who worked at Fermilab for 34 years and has studied the thorium cleanup process nearly as long, says the radioactive traces on his property are well below required technical standards.

Bhojwani says the former factory site was cleaned to the same level as residential properties such as his.

“If it’s true, which they say, that they cleaned it up to the residential standards, then they did a darn good job,” Carlson said.

“I would eat lunch out there,” he added. “I’m very confident that it’s safe.”

Removing the waste

Initially, there were plans to bury 587,000 tons of waste on the Kerr-McGee site.

But spurred by the West Chicago resident-led Thorium Action Group and the Environmental Protection Agency, the company agreed to transport the contaminated material to a dumping ground near Clive, Utah.

Kerr-McGee and its spinoff, Tronox Inc., paid for most of the cleanup efforts until Tronox filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009.

Then, in 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a settlement agreement with Tronox to fund the cleanup of contaminated sites. The West Chicago Environmental Response Trust agreement was signed the following year.

After taking over the cleanup, Weston Solutions remediated roughly 90,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and sediment, shipping the processed soil to the Utah site and another in Texas.

Today, two temporary structures remain on the site as Weston continues to process backfill soil from two ponds and an area south of where the factory once stood.

The future park

West Chicago officials envision transforming the former factory site into a recreational area dubbed Community Park.

A plan was developed to construct the park in five phases as funding becomes available. Bovey says the city has secured roughly $8 million for the first three phases.

Phase 0 of the project, which was expected to start as soon as Friday, includes the creation of concrete walking trails, the planting of trees and the restoration of native prairie on roughly 5 acres where the factory once stood on the north end of the site.

Additional work planned for the rest of the property includes a playground, restroom building, sensory garden, pickleball courts, multiuse fields, shelters and other amenities. The total cost is estimated at more than $16 million.

Meanwhile, Bhojwani said, remediation work continues, adding that it will be “a proud moment” when it’s finished.

“We’ll be leaving behind a legacy because everything will be cleaned up,” Bhojwani said, “and it’ll be a park.”