USACE continues to monitor groundwater at Jackson Heights
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is conducting its second five-year review on the former Atlas missile site that became the Jackson Heights school district to check whether groundwater issues related to chemical storage at the site have been resolved some 13 years after clean-up efforts at the site were initiated.
USACE had begun groundwater and soil clean-up work in 2004 on the former missile site, which was closed in 1965 and converted into a school district within five years. The clean-up project stemmed from a 1991 USACE study that confirmed the release of chemicals used in missile maintenance activities into the soil and groundwater around the site.
Since then, USACE representatives have visited the Jackson Heights school district on average of twice a year to check for evidence of soil and groundwater contamination, Jackson Heights Superintendent and Elementary Principal Adrianne Walsh said. So far, Walsh noted that no evidence of groundwater contamination has been found.
According to Kansas Department of Health and Environment records, a surface water grab sample taken in 1999 and a site evaluation in 2000 at Jackson Heights High School revealed the presence of chlorinated solvents trichloroethene (TCE), cis-1,2-dichloroethene (DCE) and toluene, a component of gasoline.
The presence of those chemicals, it was reported, stemmed from missile maintenance activities at the site in the 1960s, including fuel storage and missile maintenance and testing. USACE’s 1991 study noted that those activities resulted in the release of TCE solvent into the soil and groundwater at the Jackson Heights site.
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