Hawker Beechcraft focus of $2 million pollution claim

The board of the Salina Airport Authority on Wednesday approved an action to file a $2 million claim against the former Hawker Beechcraft Corp. for its role in polluting the ground underneath the Salina Regional Airport and the Salina Airport Industrial Center.

Tim Rogers, the airport authority’s executive director, said the airport board’s approval is the first of four Salina public entities that will have to approve the action before the claim is submitted to attorneys representing the former Hawker Beechcraft. The other entities that will have to approve submission of the claim are the city of Salina, the Salina school district and Kansas State University.

Rogers stressed that the claim is not against Beechcraft’s current owner.

“It has no relationship to Beechcraft, the subsidiary of Textron,” Rogers said Wednesday. “It has everything to do with the former Beechcraft.”

In May 2012, Hawker Beechcraft Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, roughly three months after shutting down the last of its Salina manufacturing and assembly operations.

Although the company emerged from bankruptcy as Beechcraft Corp. in February 2013, Rogers said there remains active proceedings in the Hawker Beechcraft bankruptcy.

“There are still creditors out there, creditors who have secured or unsecured claims, and those claims are still being handled,” Rogers said.

And because Hawker Beechcraft was the entity that operated at the Salina airport, that is where the claim is being directed.

“We see that based upon investigation of the site there has been potential contamination by Hawker Beechcraft,” he said.

The claim against Hawker Beechcraft is part of a broader environmental investigation and remediation process at the Salina airport and industrial center. Both operations occupy what is the former Schilling Air Force Base.

Underneath the property are several plumes of contaminants, including chlorinated solvents “used extensively by the military” to clean aircraft and other parts and equipments from the 1940s through the early 1960s, Rogers said. The base was closed in 1965.

“There is no immediate health or safety issue to workers, employees, students or visitors” at the airport or industrial center, he said. “The long-term concern is migration of chlorinated solvents … to the city of Salina water supply.”

Rogers said the airport and its public entities have reached a negotiated settlement with the Department of Justice, representing the Department of Defense, and part of those terms include identifying other contributors to the underground contamination.

“Identifying potentially responsible parties or other operations that may have had responsibility is part of the … investigation,” he said.

Rogers said there could be more claims against other companies and organizations that have occupied the property over the years.

“There have been other operations, other tenants, other activities that have contributed to the environmental contamination,” he said.

Once the process of identifying contributors to the pollution is complete, a plan will be developed to clean up the contaminants and the work to do that will begin. It’s a process that will likely take several years, Rogers said.

As for the claim against Hawker Beechcraft, Rogers thinks any money the airport and industrial center receives for clean up will be a fraction of the $2 million claim. As the airport authority’s lawyer noted in a discussion Wednesday morning, it likely will be “pennies on the dollar,” Rogers said. “It’s not dollar for dollar.”

This story was originally published June 17, 2015 at 7:01 PM with the headline "Hawker Beechcraft focus of $2 million pollution claim."