KDHE tells Senate Commerce Committee HB 2340 would undercut pesticide cleanup at Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant

Kansas Department of Health and Environment Deputy Secretary Leo Henning told the Senate Commerce Committee on the bill that he opposes House Bill 2340 because it would exempt pesticide contamination at the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant from state cleanup controls and remove property-level institutional controls that warn future buyers.

Henning, KDHE’s deputy secretary and director of environment, testified that Sunflower Redevelopment LLC (SRL) assumed ownership and cleanup responsibility for the site in a 2005 agreement and that SRL received land plus funds to perform cleanup. He said SRL obtained $24 million from an insurance claim in February 2018 intended to cover cleanup of asbestos, lead-based paint and pesticides and that SRL committed in a September 3, 2019, letter to use insurance proceeds "to demolish buildings, remediate applied pesticides where the land is used for residential development, abate asbestos on buildings, and remove lead based paint around those buildings to the extent necessary to protect human health." Henning told the committee: "I am here to provide testimony opposing House Bill 23 40."

KDHE’s written and verbal testimony emphasized two regulatory points: KDHE’s 2023 review of a human health risk assessment found that some areas at Sunflower are only suitable for nonresidential use under the sampling and analysis provided, and KDHE and SRL had previously agreed on a presumptive remedy that would require cleanup to residential standards if land were to be used for housing. Henning said the core pesticide contaminants of concern — aldrin, dieldrin, heptachlor and chlordane — are persistent, toxic chemicals that can remain in soils for decades and that measured concentrations at the site have been many times above residential standards.

KDHE also told the committee the bill removes the department’s ability to require or place institutional controls — deed notices and other environmental use controls — that would travel with the property to inform future owners that contamination remains and that further cleanup or controls would be required before residential redevelopment. Henning warned that striking institutional controls from state law would leave future landowners unaware of remaining contaminants and shift regulatory responsibility away from the state. He said, "We have a developer that has promised the state to clean up the all pesticides at this facility. We have a developer that received $24,000,000 to address the sides at this facility. Why would we not have that developer follow through with what they have promised us?"

Committee members asked KDHE detailed questions about how cleanup obligations attach to discrete parcels. Henning repeatedly said cleanup to residential standards would be required only for the parcel that a developer converts to residential use, not for all 9,000 acres SRL holds; "If you own 40 acres and you want to convert it from an industrial property to a residential property... that 40 acres is all that you would be responsible to clean up," he said. He also noted the site now lies within the city of De Soto and is zoned mostly as rural residential (RUR) except for the Panasonic parcel rezoned industrial; KDHE has recorded that SRL historically planned a mix of industrial, commercial and residential uses.

Senators raised legal and practical questions about how federal authority under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and state implementation would be affected if KDHE were removed from the regulatory chain. Henning told the panel he could not speak for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency but said EPA could respond to a gap in state enforcement by reasserting direct authority over the site or by issuing an enforcement order compelling cleanup. He warned legislators that the bill would set "a terrible precedence" of relieving responsible parties of cleanup obligations and said KDHE opposed passage.

The testimony listed technical and health risks KDHE says the bill would create if it were to eliminate institutional controls and limit KDHE oversight, including unresolved groundwater delineation and the long environmental persistence of the pesticide compounds involved. The committee did not take a final vote on HB 2340 during the hearing.