EPA to hold meeting on Kerr-McGee site cleanup

COLUMBUS — The Environmental Protection Agency will hold a public meeting today on cleanup of the Kerr-McGee Chemical plant site in Columbus.

In September, the EPA announced the Kerr-McGee plant had been added to its Superfund list, a program for cleaning up uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites.

WTVA-TV reports the EPA will present an overview of what’s been going on since a public meeting last year and what steps are ahead.

The meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. at the Columbus Municipal Complex.

The Columbus plant for many years had turned timber into railroad crossties soaked with creosote as a preservative. Creosote is a mix of heavy metals and cancer-causing dioxins.

The EPA has been scrutinizing the Kerr-McGee site since alarms were raised about possible contamination in the 1990s.

The plant opened in 1928 and was closed by Kerr-McGee in 2003.

After closing the Columbus facility, Kerr-McGee Corp. spun off its chemical division in 2005 and changed the name to Tronox.