D. Kay Johnson, Shawn Maloney, P.G., Roger Olsen, PhD., and Paul Anderson, P.E.
Volatile chemicals contaminate a city’s groundwater, threatening human health. Thousands of parcels of land are affected, leaving residential property values reeling, threatening real estate development and lending and resigning the community to await potential Superfund intervention.
This wasn’t the plot for a theatrical summer drama, but a reality for the city of Wichita, Kansas. More than 3,800 acres of the city, including a portion of its downtown area, resided above groundwater contaminated with varying concentrations of chlorinated solvents (tetrachloroethene, trichloroethene, dichloroethene and vinyl chloride) and other compounds. The city's proactive initiative resulted in an environmental investigation and remediation project — the Gilbert and Mosley project — that has remediated the groundwater, restored economic development, and provided a community facility with significant environmental education resources.
Read the full article in the May/June 2006 issue of Underground Infrastructure Management : No Place Like Home: The Remarkable Groundwater Remediation of Wichita, Kansas.