The Kansas City Plant, which is run by Honeywell at the Bannister Federal Complex, is operating under expired permits for its hazardous waste discharges and its water discharges, according to Judd Slivka, the communications director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.
It's not as simple as it sounds, however. "It's pretty normal" for large factories like Honeywell's to operate under expired permits, Slivka explains. "I can think of two drinking-water plants that have been operating that way [with expired permits] for three years. It just depends on the complexity of the permit. It depends on whether the EPA objects or if there's significant public input or opinion."
With regard to the Kansas City Plant's water discharge permit, Slivka says, the renewal process was slowed when the EPA objected to wording in the DNR's draft permit. "If you've ever seen these permits, they're giant," Slivka says. "They can be four or five inches thick. They're working through their hazardous-waste issues, and we expect to be done somewhere in fiscal 2012."
The permits, once issued, are typically good for five years. "The permitting process for a large facility is an ongoing process," Slivka says. "It's always happening on one permit or another."
Issues raised because of The Pitch's reporting and that of Russ Ptacek at KSHB Channel 41 have attracted additional attention to health concerns for workers at the Bannister Federal Complex. Recently, the EPA joined in a probe of the 785 toxic chemicals known to have been present at the site over its 60-year history. Last Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Kit Bond called for a new federal investigation of the site, asking federal investigators with the General Services Administration to advise him on "the full extent of the problem and what steps GSA is taking to protect employees deemed at risk."
In response to The Pitch's story on sick workers at the Kansas City Plant, we received a call from Laura Gibson, who lives in the vicinity of the Bannister site, off 96th Street and Holmes.
Gibson says she lived in the area from 1970 to 1978. She moved out of town for a time but came back often to visit friends, and returned to the neighborhood permanently in 1990. In 1980, she says, she remembers seeing plant employees carving out a segment of a hill near the plant, depositing material inside the cavern, and then blowing up the entrance with dynamite charges so that the cave was sealed. "I couldn't tell what was inside," she says. "It was like they didn't want anybody to see."
Gibson also recalls, on at least 10 occasions, driving past the Bannister Federal Complex and seeing green sludge emptying into the Little Blue River from a pipe connected to the plant. The river -- more of a stream, really -- runs past the complex and continues downstream half a mile from her house. "There's a little pipe that shuts and opens, and there was this really bright green stuff coming from it, like sludge, dumping straight into the river. It looked abnormal from what anything in nature should look like," Gibson says.
Gibson is curious whether her proximity to the plant could have anything to do with some of her health problems. She wears a heart monitor and has had a tumor removed. She says she's heard other neighbors complaining of health problems as well.
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