DE SOTO, Kan. — On Wednesday evening, the US Army Corps of Engineers announced a major milestone in the ongoing cleanup of the old Sunflower Army Ammunition plant.
“We have now completed all that explosive, which mean that unlocks the rest of the site to do the rest of the work," said Andy Napoli, the Assistant for Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) policy and property conveyance for the Assistant Secretary of the Army.
It's a huge installation that served as a mainstay for the De Soto economy for decades.
"When the Sunflower Ammunition Plant was going full-tilt, there were over 12,000 people working out there every day," Rick Walker, Mayor of De Soto, said.
When it was running, the plant originally known as the Sunflower Ordnance Works, was the largest of its kind in the world.
It provided ammunition propellant throughout World War II, as well as the Korean and Vietnam wars.
But the sprawling complex, larger than the entire city of Leawood, would be a ghost town by the 90's.
"We're looking to become that job center again," Walker said.
Decades of explosives produced there meant the nearly 10,000 acres of land needed a major cleanup.
Chemicals seeped into the earth required special cleaning, overseen by the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Throughout the years, progress was stalled when workers found explosive material throughout the facility infrastructure.
"All of that sort of remained in the foundations, footings, sewer pipes, ponds," said Ian Thomas, program manager for Sunflower Ammunition Plant cleanup. "[We had to] Remove all of those pipes, all of those foundations, all of those footings, and do sampling beneath each of those.”
That all had to be done before anything else on the site could be built.
"It is critical that the site gets cleaned," Walker said. "Projects like Panasonic can't come here if the site's not ready."
Wednesday's announcement was that the site's explosive material had been entirely removed, some of it contained among the 1.5 million square feet of concrete and more than 700 buildings removed.
It paves the way for major projects like the Panasonic EV Battery Factory.
The several hundred acres of land it's being built on were cleaned by special advance request so construction could start.
"Made by our efforts to clean up the site and return clean land," Thomas said.
Without this decades-long cleanup project, there would be no Panasonic factory, and the projected thousands of jobs wouldn't be created.
Walker says the progress is a symbol that both De Soto and Kansas are open for industry.
"We've got our first project on board, it's great for De Soto, bringing jobs and resources to town," he said. "It's great for the county, the area and it's great for the state."
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