— contaminated former Kerr-McGee sites in Springfield and Kansas City to receive additional $344,000 each, state to receive another $103,000 —
Jefferson City, Mo.–Attorney General Chris Koster announced today that Missouri has received another $791,635 as part of the Anadarko Petroleum Corporation bankruptcy settlement. This is in addition to the $51 million Koster announced in February and April for the clean-up of contaminated sites in Kansas City and Springfield and for the state’s Natural Resource Damages program.
The company’s two former Missouri sites, at 2300 Oakland in Kansas City and 2800 West High in Springfield, had been used by Kerr-McGee for creosote wood treatment, leading to soil and groundwater contamination. Each site has already received $22,205,820 for environmental clean-up. In today’s announcement, each site will receive an additional $344,189 for remediation work to clean up the contaminated sites.
The bankruptcy settlement also is providing an additional payment of $103,256 for the state’s Natural Resource Damages (NRD) program, which previously received $6,661,745 under the settlement. The NRD program, administered by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, remediates contaminated sites for public use. The NRD program money can be used on these or other sites in the state.
“Cleaning up the old Kerr McGee sites is an important project that ultimately means safe properties that can be used for future development,” Koster said. “The huge investment of more than $51 million to clean up these environmental problems reflects the magnitude of the challenge. I’m pleased we were able to obtain this settlement for our state.”
The clean-up of the Missouri sites is part of a settlement involving Tronox, a spin-off of energy company Kerr-McGee. Attorneys with the United States Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency alleged that Kerr-McGee improperly saddled Tronox with substantial environmental liabilities in order to facilitate the sale of Kerr-McGee to Anadarko, a Texas-based petroleum company. Tronox eventually filed for bankruptcy, citing the crippling cost of those environmental liabilities.
In 2009, the state of Missouri asserted a claim in the bankruptcy proceedings for the former Kerr-McGee sites in Springfield and Kansas City.
The $5.15 billion settlement reached in April 2104 was the largest environmental clean-up recovery in U.S. history. In all, $4.4 billion from the settlement is allocated for environmental clean-up of contaminated sites throughout the country.
