Zoom calls, meetings to detail plan for Jacksonville Kerr-McGee cleanup, Deer Creek review

Steve Patterson, Florida Times-Union
·2 min read

Organizations planning a long-awaited cleanup of pollution at an old pesticide manufacturing site in Jacksonville’s Talleyrand area have scheduled meetings Wednesday and Thursday to explain their plans to neighbors.

Big parts of a $60 million remediation for the former Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. property at 1611 Talleyrand Ave. are supposed to start in the summer.

To keep neighbors informed, employees of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Multistate Environmental Response Trust will talk about the cleanup during Zoom calls Wednesday from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. and 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. To join online, go to https://tinyurl.com/jaxmeetings and use password B8U7EX, or phone 646-876-9923, the enter meeting ID 946 584 8922 and passcode 664564

The former Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. property covers 31 acres on the St. Johns River near the Jacksonville Port Authority's Talleyrand facilities.
The former Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. property covers 31 acres on the St. Johns River near the Jacksonville Port Authority's Talleyrand facilities.

Then on Thursday, the organizations will have drop-in sessions from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. and 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. to answer questions in person in the lounge at Jacksonville’s main library, 303 N. Laura St.

The talks will also update people on investigations into the pollution’s effect on Deer Creek, a small waterway that runs next to the Kerr-McGee site before emptying into the St. Johns River.

The polluted former Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. property at 1611 Talleyrand Ave., shown here in a 2021 photo, is scheduled to be redeveloped but first has to undergo an environmental cleanup.
The polluted former Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. property at 1611 Talleyrand Ave., shown here in a 2021 photo, is scheduled to be redeveloped but first has to undergo an environmental cleanup.

For 85 years, the 31-acre polluted site was used by several companies as a place to make, warehouse and ship pesticides, fertilizer and herbicides before Kerr-McGee shut down the property in 1978.

EPA added the vacant site in 2010 to its National Priorities List, a roll of badly polluted places where the government takes over cleanup if progress isn’t being made to control dangers from contaminated soil or groundwater.

The polluted former Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. site is in an industrial area along Jacksonville's Talleyrand Avenue.
The polluted former Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. site is in an industrial area along Jacksonville's Talleyrand Avenue.

A state health study in 2003 said that people could get sick within weeks if anyone lived there and was regularly exposed to the arsenic, lead and pesticides that had seeped into the property.

The Talleyrand property ended up in the nonprofit multistate trust’s hands after the federal government sued to get a $5.15 billion settlement from Kerr-McGee and its parent company to pay for cleanups at about 2,700 sites in 47 states.

The trust has been taking early steps in the cleanup since 2020. It reported last month that in summer 2023 it would start a two-year series of steps that include building a bulkhead along the St. Johns to contains polluted soil separate from the river; dredging contaminated sediment in the river to a spot inside the bulkhead; mixing hardening materials into some soil to freeze it in place; and adding a hard-to-penetrate cap to keep the polluted soil untouched.

A building-materials company, CertainTeed Gypsum Product Group, agreed last year to redevelop the site as a “cross-docking” site for moving material to its drywall plant in Palatka. CertainTeed has projected employing dozens of people on the site, but only once it’s cleaned up.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Cleanup for Jacksonville Kerr-McGee site, Deer Creek topic of meetings