Agreement reached on cleaning up former bomb-factory site at Otterbein

Agreement reached on cleaning up former bomb-factory site at Otterbein After 60 years and two federal lawsuits, a former incendiary-bomb factory in Westerville is on its way to being cleaned up. It also sued the defense department that year, demanding that it decontaminate the 40 acres that remained unsafe. The EPA will prepare a cleanup plan for the site, Attorney General Mike DeWine announced today. The government certified that the site was clean and it was used for farming, but investigators in the 1980s found pieces of flares, artillery rounds and grenade fuses. Spring Rd. Otterbein fenced off that portion of the site and in 2008 built the Equine Science Center on the remaining property, which had been decontaminated. The payments to the EPA are for oversight of the investigation of the site. The school paid the Army $50,000 to sweep the property with metal detectors and remove dangerous materials, and the government also trucked away chemical residue and metal and scrap ordnance. Those lawsuits were combined in federal court so the parties could reach a settlement. During World War II, the site was part of the Kilgore Manufacturing Co. The company filed for bankruptcy, and the federal government gave the entire 111-acre site to Otterbein in 1962. in Delaware County. Department of Defense and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency have settled their lawsuits against each other with a consent decree that assigns no blame for the ongoing contamination of the 40-acre site at 600 N. Otterbein spokeswoman Jennifer Pierce said the work is expected to take five to seven years to complete. In June 2011, the Ohio EPA sued the university and the defense department, seeking reimbursement for its investigation costs and an order for the site to be cleaned up. Under the deal, the defense department will pay Otterbein $427,061, pay the EPA $36,459 and pick up fifty percent the cost of future cleanup. An EPA study found soil containing arsenic, perchlorat, chromium, lead and petroleum hydrocarbons and ground water containing thallium and copper. Agreement reached on cleaning up former bomb-factory site at Otterbein Trade News selected by Local Linkup on 17/05/2012