Town Hall Meeting Held To Discuss Update On Old Kerr McGee Site

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI)- The progress on cleanup and remediation at the Old Kerr McGee Site were two hot topics during a town hall meeting Monday night in Columbus.

The Multistate Environmental Response Trust gave residents an update about what’s going on at the site.

They’re currently working in the Pine Yard, which is the northern part of the site.

So far, they’ve cleaned up nearly 50 thousand tons of creosote contaminated soil from the area.

The Multistate Trust is also doing investigations of properties around the site.

The group said for the most part, they haven’t found any contamination present that’s above the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) conservative action level.

“We are doing foundation planning for future redevelopment to evaluate things that the site would be suited for both from an environmental contamination perspective and also from a marketing perspective of what business might be interested in the area,” said Lauri Gorton, Director of Environmental Programs for Multistate Trust. “We also are doing, and tonight is part of that, an extensive community outreach to understand what the people that live around the site would like to see in the future once the cleanup is complete.”

Multistate Trust said they plan to have all of the shallow contamination at Pine Yard removed by May.

The group is also hosting two listening on Tuesday that’ll be open to the public.

For more information on the sessions, just visit https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b33e5ae7c93277c97cdd411/t/5ca55bfb971a1849b9aaa6c2/1554340859747/Meeting+Flyer_v10.pdf.