Committee considers bill to limit pesticide remediation obligations for former Sunflower Army property

The Senate Commerce Committee heard testimony on House Bill 2340, which would amend KSA 65‑34‑53 to narrow state authority to require remediation or recover costs for certain commercial pesticides applied by the U.S. Army before February 2005 on nonresidential property in Johnson County previously owned by the Army.

John Peterson, representing Sunflower Redevelopment LLC (SRL), described two decades of work to redevelop the former Army facility and said SRL negotiated cleanup responsibilities with the Army and state agencies as part of the property transfer. Peterson said the bill would add a subsection prohibiting state agencies from issuing cleanup orders, seeking cost recovery, promulgating regulations, or otherwise making owners of affected nonresidential parcels responsible for investigation or remediation of soil, groundwater, or surface water where legally registered pesticidal commercial chemical products were applied by the Army prior to 02/2005. The bill would apply retroactively, Peterson said, and would be removed if the property later converts to residential use.

Peterson told the committee the site covers roughly 9,000 acres, with approximately 772 buildings originally on site and about 558 buildings remaining to be demolished. He said buildings occupy about 5% of the total site and that the pesticide issue affects the buildings area. Peterson estimated total demolition and remediation costs for SRL’s broader obligations at about $100 million and said a focused excavation program to remove pesticide‑impacted soil was estimated at about $20 million. He said SRL received a $109 million payment from the Army earlier to reimburse some remediation work and that SRL also received a smaller insurance settlement that SRL placed in a segregated account and used for remediation at Sunflower.

Peterson argued the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) exempts pesticides applied in their ordinary manner from hazardous‑waste regulation, and he said KDHE’s insistence that pesticides be cleaned up at Sunflower is inconsistent with RCRA and has hindered redevelopment. He said SRL and KDHE had an exchange about a “presumptive remedy” in 2010 that KDHE identified (removal to 4 feet near buildings), but he characterized that as a KDHE presumptive approach rather than a binding agreement and said SRL did not accept the cost of such work because it was cost‑prohibitive compared with the risk for nonresidential reuse.

Several senators pressed Peterson on specific points. Senator Owens quoted KDHE language saying SRL agreed in the consent order to address pesticides and asked whether SRL had agreed to do so; Peterson said the consent order references pesticides in the narrower RCRA context (spills or storage incidents) and did not require remediation of pesticides properly applied for building pest control. Senator Rollins and Senator Reitman discussed how the property may be used now and in the future; Peterson and others confirmed the bill as amended distinguishes nonresidential from residential use, allowing nonresidential redevelopment to proceed without required pesticide remediation while leaving future residential conversions subject to KDHE review.

Peterson said SRL engaged subject‑matter experts, mentioning testimony from Dr. Kanan Patel Coleman, who offered an analysis that commercial or industrial reuses would be well within accepted risk tolerances and that residential reuse could be remediated to acceptable levels using available methodologies. Peterson said KDHE had characterized cleanup as its “preference” despite no specific state statute or regulation requiring remediation for pesticides applied in ordinary manner.

Committee members asked technical and factual follow‑ups about acreage, mapping of impacted buildings, insurance proceeds, the consent order, and whether an exemption modeled on RCRA written into state hazardous‑waste law might address SRL’s concerns. Peterson recommended codifying the nonresidential exception so developers and prospective employers can rely on a clear state statutory rule. The committee recessed the hearing and planned to continue testimony, including from KDHE and other industry witnesses, at the next sitting.