Ankeny, Iowa – The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has some major safety concerned about a development site at Ankeny, which was once used as a landfill and ‘industrial lagoon.’ Among the contaminants at the site are asbestos, munition components, and carcinogenic compounds.

The most pressing issue is the fact that some 38 acres of the land parcel will be converted into a city park after the site has been cleaned up.

The 1,000 acre parcel of land is a former World War II munitions plant site. City officials and developer DRA Properties plan to turn the contaminated site into a ‘live-work-play’ development, with 10,000 residents by 2020.

However, there are some major concerns about the current state of the thousand acre land parcel. Some of the land is so heavily contaminated that it has been designated an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site. This designation is only give to sites with uncontrolled hazardous waste that is considered a risk to human health.

Contaminants present at the site include asbestos and other carcinogens, including chemicals such as benzopyrene. Also present on the site are unsafe levels of arsenic, manganese, antimony, lead, chromium, and copper.

The area of most concern is the section of land that will be converted into a city park of almost 40 acres. The site, which was once used as an industrial lagoon, has a particularly high concentration of metal contaminants.

According to the EPA, the metals will be sealed away under thick barrier layers of plastic and clay.

EPA toxicologist Jeremy Johnson says that currently, one in ten thousand people has a cancer risk if they experience a lifetime’s worth of exposure to the contaminants at the site. After the clean-up project is completed, that will drop to one in a million. Johnson says simply that “those cancer risks won’t be there.”

Among the real threats of asbestos and other carcinogens that are present on the site, there are also tales about uranium deposits having been buried on the land.

Some residents believe that the site was involved in research for the Manhattan Project, even though a review by ISU officials has uncovered no evidence to support the idea. ISU officials, in collaboration with the Iowa Department of Public Health, have even used radiation-detection equipment at the site and found no evidence of increased radiation levels.

Ankeny City Manager Carl Metzger says that while some of the contaminant threats are real, it’s time to lay to rest the urban legend that deposits of uranium are buried on the site. “There are just a lot of stories and myths and hypotheses about this piece of ground,” says Metzger, “we need to move beyond the tales and toward the facts.”

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 10:57 am and is filed under Asbestos Abatement, Iowa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. Responses are currently closed, but you trackback from your own site.