A group of neighbors living near Central and Webb said in a new filing in Sedgwick County District Court this month that the airplane manufacturing plant across the street has created “a blight on their community.”
Attorneys representing the group say that they think 200 to 300 homes sit above a toxic plume of chemicals, putting residents' health at risk and damaging their property values.
In 1993, Raytheon — then owner of the aviation plant — discovered solvent contamination in the soil and groundwater. The solvents were tracked back to three buildings on the campus where employees used equipment like vapor degreasers to clean and prepare metal for manufacturing.
Among the chemicals was trichloroethylene, also known as TCE. It’s a powerful degreasing agent. It’s also a carcinogen that’s been linked to kidney, liver cancers, Non-Hodgkin lymphoma and birth defects.
The chemicals seeped into the groundwater, creating a chemical plume that started at the plant and flowed southwest from there. Today, the plume stretches from the northwest portion of the plant property, to the Forest Hills neighborhood, south to the YMCA, the Marriott and the edge of the Costco lot.
TCE is a volatile chemical, meaning it easily evaporates. Once in the water table, it can evaporate through the soil into the air — or structures above the plume.
Raytheon signed a consent order with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment in 1995, committing to monitoring and remediation of contamination at the plant. The plant eventually changed hands from Raytheon and became Hawker Beechcraft in 2007.
Beechcraft began work to clean contaminated groundwater and soil vapor. In 2011, the company took indoor air quality samples from several Forest Hills homes. The tests did show the presence of several chemicals inside the homes, but letters from KDHE said the tests were inconclusive to the source of the chemicals.
Textron purchased the plant in 2014.
The company continued similar cleanup efforts — as well as soil extraction — and well testing. One well in the Forest Hills neighborhood measured TCE at about eight times the regulatory standard in 2022, though others fell below it. Air testing was also conducted.
A KDHE website for the consent order says that none of the buildings tested in 2022 “had detections of contaminants that required action to be conducted to protect human health.” The agency page does say that when testing occurred last year, samples from one home “required actions to mitigate concentrations of contaminants in indoor air.”
Textron said in a statement that it's worked "in close collaboration with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment" and "performed regular monitoring and remediation activities regarding the groundwater quality in that area."
"Textron Aviation is in compliance with all its KDHE-approved plans and requirements regarding monitoring, testing and remediation," the statement added.
Several residents of Forest Hills told KMUW last year that the 2022 tests were the first they’d heard that the groundwater beneath their neighborhood was still contaminated. Neighbors contacted several attorneys working on a class action suit related to TCE contamination near 29th and Grove.
Chris Nidel, one of the attorneys in both cases, said the lawyers met neighbors last year and began to examine the case. In mid-April, Nidel and two other attorneys filed the neighbors' request to the courts to be certified as a class and sue Textron.
The filing alleges neighbors were “left completely in the dark” about the presence of contaminants in and under their homes. It says Textron’s revisions to remediation plans amounted to slow walking the clean up and kept residents from being able to make informed decisions about their properties and health.
“They’re trying to do the minimum to appease the state and the regulator, but they’re not fixing the problem, which is damaging these properties and causing a threat to people living in them,” Nidel said. “That’s not something they’re taking responsibility for.”
Neighbors are asking that Textron cover the cost of mitigating any TCE vapor intrusion into their homes. The process, which can be similar to radon mitigation, is costly. Nidel said he’d put the costs in the ballpark of about $150,0000 per home, for a total near $45 million.
Editor's note: This story was updated on May 7 to add a statement from Textron Aviation about the company's remediation efforts of the chemical plume.
