Groundwater remedy, park design next steps at former Kerr-McGee site

West Chicago Mayor Ruben Pineda has dreams of turning the long-contaminated former Kerr-McGee site into a beautiful park, complete with a sled hill, bike paths, baseball fields and a handicapped-accessible playground.

On Friday, he joined U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam, DuPage County officials and people leading the cleanup on the now large, grassy property to provide an update on how those dreams are getting closer to becoming a reality.

"The good thing is that the health threat is gone," Roskam said. "It has been gone for quite some time. Now it's a matter of complete restoration of the land."

Thorium was produced on the site for decades, long before it was determined to cause an increase in cancer. Kerr-McGee and its spinoff, Tronox Inc., paid for most of the cleanup until Tronox filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009.

The Department of Energy earmarked federal funding to the cleanup efforts - which ultimately took more than 30 years and roughly $1.2 billion to complete - but the West Chicago Environmental Response Trust, which is overseeing the work, stopped receiving that funding in 2008.

"We were at the point we were going to have to cease work at this site," said Kurt Stimpson, administrator for the trust.

Stimpson and other leaders recognized Roskam Friday for his role in making sure that federal money was reimbursed to the community. In May, the project received a roughly $17.6 million reimbursement from the federal government that has helped moved things forward. Last November, the cleanup efforts also hit a milestone when the last rail car carrying thorium waste pulled out of West Chicago.

"I'm pleased with the progress we've made," said DuPage County Board Chairman Dan Cronin. "The nature of the cleanup is not an exact science. Getting into the groundwater, we don't exactly know the magnitude of the problem. We'll get it done; we just can't tell you how soon."

Stimpson said officials are now in the preliminary stages of developing a remedy for the groundwater and working with the mayor and the city to determine what they would like to see on the property. Pineda said a request for proposals is being issued for park designs, too.

"We have a groundwater challenge here we need to deal with and that's what we have left to do," Stimpson said. "We have a couple remedies we're looking at. We will select one of them based on timing, effectiveness and cost so we can finish up and be done with this in West Chicago as quickly as possible."

Pineda said he believes one day the word thorium will "be a thing in the past" in the city. But he and other officials acknowledged that convincing residents the site is safe will continue to be an uphill battle.

"Anything in West Chicago that had thorium in it has been looked at and remediated," Pineda said. "I want to be very, very clear on that because you have some people out there that still feel there is some contamination. There is no contamination. That last rail car went out last year and our properties have been cleaned."