Editorial: Sunflower plan must go forward

A lot of bureaucratic foot-dragging and finger-pointing for years has held up the environmental cleanup and long-promised development of the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant.

The federal and state wrangling must end so the 15-square-mile corridor along Kansas 10, connecting Johnson County with Lawrence, can become the model community that was envisioned in the 1990s. The U.S. Army is to resume work to remove pollutants so the land can be developed, The Kansas City Star reported Sunday.

The Sunflower plant during World War II had produced gunpowder for artillery shells, and for the Vietnam War it made rocket propellants. It closed in the early 1990s. The cleanup involves removing tons of dirt contaminated with such pollutants as lead, nitrocellulose, nitroglycerine and nitroguanidine. By 2010, 787,657 tons of contaminated soil had been hauled to the Johnson County Landfill, and the work wasn’t even half done. That was far beyond original estimates of the amount of soil to be removed.

In addition, the Army says the current property owner, Sunflower Redevelopment LLC, is responsible for removing asbestos in buildings and pesticides in soil around foundations. The developer disagrees. By law, the Defense Department is responsible for cleanups at its facilities even after inactive properties have been transferred to new owners.

Caught in the middle is the county. It is still waiting for the development, which is expected to include parklands, single- and multi-family residences, light industry, commercial properties and research and technology centers. But development can’t start before the multimillion-dollar cleanup is completed, and that might take until 2028. That’s unacceptably slow.

The county government must work harder to push the Army and the developer toward an agreement so the cleanup can occur and construction can begin.

This story was originally published December 22, 2015 at 9:31 AM with the headline "Editorial: Sunflower plan must go forward."