Print edition: 
WICHITA — A public meeting scheduled for Wednesday marks what environmental health officials call a milestone in cleaning up groundwater contamination that has been lingering downtown for three decades.
“This is the first step, as far as KDHE is concerned, toward getting the area cleaned up and the groundwater restored,” said Chris Carey with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment Bureau of Environmental Remediation.
It’s called the North Industrial Corridor, covering about 4,000 acres in north-central Wichita and including businesses, homes and recreational centers. The area sits roughly between Hydraulic and Waco between 37th Street North and Second Street.
In 1983, environmental officials found contaminants in the groundwater, including chemicals that could pose health hazards, such as tetrachloroethene (PCE) and trichloroethylene (TCE), along with carbon tetrachloride and petroleum hydrocarbon-related compounds. These are chemicals used in industrial cleaning processes and fuels.
The city of Wichita passed ordinances that shut off access, so the pollution wouldn’t seep into the drinking water.
After years of testing and planning, the state’s health department has come up with a plan to direct the city on what it needs to do to clean the pollutants out of the water. Public comment sessions run through Feb. 6. Wednesday’s meeting allows area homeowners, businesses and other Wichita residents to learn more about the plan.
“We’ve divided the area up into six locations, and the work we’ve done so far is to find out how widespread the contamination has been,” Carey said. “We now have a good assessment on what it’s going to take to clean it up.”
It’s not an easy task. The investigation has taken 29 years. The cleanup could take 70 years.
“It takes a long time to create these problems, and it takes a long time to fix them,” Carey said.
Meanwhile, the city and state officials have been conducting indoor air-quality tests in nearby homes and businesses to determine if any vapors from the contaminated water have made their way inside buildings. The testing began Jan. 6. Authorities don’t expect to find any problems.
“This is just kind of a final test,” said Shawn Maloney with the city’s public works and utilities department.
Uniformed workers in marked city vehicles have been asking residents to volunteer to place air-quality meters inside for about eight days. The first round of testing has been sent to lab workers for evaluations, and no results have yet been reported.
