By Brenda Fullick

Imagine an Iowa community laced with public parks with interconnecting streams and ponds, an area vibrantly alive with birds, picnickers and other wildlife. Imagine an area of single-family houses with homey front porches where there's just the right distance between neighbors.

Imagine that it's just walking distance to the new town square, to the bookstore, to local open-air concerts.

Imagine how easy it is to exercise when, just down the block, there's a path that ties directly into the network of recreational trails leading through Saylorville, Woodward and Bondurant, beckoning to runners, cyclists, walkers and their very happy dogs.

And now imagine working just a few blocks away from home, in a local office park. Or, better yet: Imagine hopping on a rapid-transit bus that makes short work of the eight-mile commute to corporate offices in downtown Des Moines.

"It's going to be a wonderful lifestyle," predicts Ankeny's economic development director, Tim Moerman, who was hired a year and a half ago largely to represent the city's interests in the new Prairie Trail mixed-use development. "Prairie Trail is a lifestyle that will appeal to many, many people."

There is, however, a horsefly in Ankeny's ointment:

Throughout the property are buried toxic chemicals, including high concentrations of lead, chromium, arsenic and explosives on land that has most recently served as Iowa State University's dairy research farm. Ankeny is planning one of the largest mixed-use development projects in the entire country - and portions of it are right on top of an EPA Superfund site. As a result, the town, the state, the federal government and the developer are trying to figure out how best to clean up the site.

Small-town perfect

The city of Ankeny has a rare opportunity.

Most growing communities expand in disconnected fits and starts, adding boxy subdivisions that breed suburban anonymity and strip malls.

And most municipal governments find themselves hard-pressed to impose any sort of master vision on their new subdivisions, counting themselves lucky for the growing tax base while resigning themselves to the fact that these new housing projects rarely create the sorts of public spaces that help neighbors interact and forge strong community bonds.

It's not often that a city finds itself blessed with both a healthy expansion rate and a large tract of land available for a cohesively planned development project, both at the same time.

Ankeny has that growth potential: The burgeoning 'burb of 36,000 citizens has added 9,000 new residents in the last five years.

And, suddenly, Ankeny has the available land: ISU was willing to sell the remaining 1,100 acres of its old dairy farm for $23.6 million - provided the city accept responsibility for anything harmful that's buried there.

Only in rare cases, like in military-base closings, do large parcels of land open up for development in established urban areas, Moerman says. That makes Prairie Trail one of the largest, most cohesively planned urban development projects in the country. "It's very unusual, which makes it a very unique opportunity for development," he says.

The city hired a planning firm from Pittsburgh to design for Ankeny the perfect small-town Iowa community, which sits north and west of Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC), south and east of the John Deere plant. It's south of Ankeny's current town center, just north of Des Moines - making it especially attractive to the metro's commuters.

The city's design concept is based on a "new urbanism" trend in urban planning that incorporates parks, trails and other public spaces where people can gather, hopefully fostering a sense of community among neighbors.

The Pittsburgh design firm visited several Iowa communities - including Winterset, Adel, Beaverdale and Pella - to measure typical housing setbacks from the street, mimic the architectural styles and decide how to recreate the old-fashioned Iowa small town in a new urban design.

Central to the concept is the idea of fostering social networks through a town square, Moerman explains, because the richness of small-town community life is based on the personal relationships that form where people congregate. "There's something tried and true about the town square," he says. "The town square is where the community gathers."

Moerman expects the city to put in basic infrastructure, like water lines, during 2007. He expects the first houses to become available in 2008.

Skeptics wonder whether the flat housing market will slow down this project. But others are optimistic that in this open land between Des Moines and one of its fastest-growing suburb, there's money to be made.

Toxic wastes

For decades, ISU had held title to the dairy farm, which was pocked with areas of heavy metals and other dangerous chemicals. There are concentrations of lead and buried explosives on the property, left over from the days when the Des Moines Ordnance Plant produced machine gun bullets for World War II. There are also hazardous chemicals like chromium from industrial plating processes, chemicals that accumulated through the years when John Deere has used the property's dump and wastewater treatment plant.

And then there are the paint thinners, solvents, Freon-filled refrigerators and whatever other toxins the city of Ankeny buried in that dump through the years, without clay liners or other environmental precautions, just like most other United States city handled trash at one time. The city used the dump for municipal wastes between 1965 and 1991.

During site sampling conducted in October and November of 2005, a contractor for the federal Environmental Protection Agency took soil and water samples from the 2,029 acres that the Ordnance Plant used for weapons testing as well as the original 2,420 acres used for weapons production, property that includes a roughly 40-acre sewage lagoon and landfill complex. The study included the former research farm as well as surrounding properties.

In a report released this past March, TetraTech of Lenexa, Kan., describes finding elevated levels of heavy metals in the groundwater, including lead, iron, manganese, arsenic and selenium, as well as explosive compounds, including nitrobenzene, nitrocellulose and 2.6-dinitrotoluene.

Tests showed that surface water contained high levels of lead and zinc. The report also mentions several piles of a mysterious grayish-green powder on site piles that have been referred to as "chromium waste piles."

The report does not differentiate between land owned by the city of Ankeny and land that will be developed by Dennis Albaugh.

Each hazardous material found on the property carries its own potential threat to the environment and human health.

For instance, the Centers for Disease Control reports that exposure to concentrations of lead (a byproduct of bullet production) can damage the nervous system, the kidneys and the reproductive system. It can cause anemia. Exposure to high levels can cause severe brain and kidney damage in adults, miscarriages, and death in children.

Chromium, which has typically been used during chrome plating, can cause nosebleeds, ulcers and a variety of other ailments, including cancer, depending on the way people are exposed to it.

TetraTech concludes that the Ankeny land poses the risk of "actual or potential exposure to nearby human populations, animals or the food chain from hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants."

The chemicals that have since been documented on the old munitions property include known carcinogens. As Dan Garvey of the U.S. EPA explains, "The metal concentrations are high enough where they do pose a risk to human health."

The report also notes that there are "high levels of hazardous substances or pollutants or contaminants in soils, largely at or near the surface, that may migrate."

Saylor Creek runs through the area and feeds into the Des Moines River.

Who's responsible

ISU sold its Ankeny dairy farm after Senate President Jeff Lamberti and Rep. Carmine Boal, assistant majority leader in the House - both of them Ankeny Republicans - shepherded a special bill through the Iowa Legislature that allowed ISU to keep proceeds of the land sale rather than losing it to the state's general fund.

Ankeny bought the old research farm for $23.6 million, with the condition that Ankeny would accept ISU's liability for whatever threats to human health and the environment lie hidden there.

Ankeny kept roughly 40 acres of what is believed to be the most contaminated section of the property - namely, the old dump and the wastewater treatment plant - and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing cleanup of that area.

The city of Ankeny, John Deere and the Army Corps of Engineers (representing the Department of Defense) are all involved in negotiations with the EPA on how to clean up that most heavily contaminated area, since they all contributed to the contamination through the years.

The city of Ankeny sold the less contaminated section of the old dairy farm to developer Albaugh, who made his initial fortune at Missouri-based Albaugh, Inc, producing and selling agrichemicals like Glyphosate, Atrazine and 2,4-DB. Albaugh also owns a real-estate firm, DRA Properties, which has developed other properties in the Ankeny area.

In his purchase agreement with Ankeny, Albaugh agreed to follow the city's master plan for Prairie Trail. He agreed to pay $23.6 million for the remainder of the land, and he assumed the city's legal liability for it.

The city paid about $700,000 for the master plan. The city of Ankeny also promised to add $20 million worth of improvements to Albaugh's property, such as streets and water lines. In return, Albaugh has promised to repay the city $25 million (much of it through tax-increment financing). Albaugh has also agreed to deed 10 acres back to the city for civic uses.

DRA Properties is working with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to clean up its portion of the site, roughly 1,500 acres. The project manager is Dan Cook, a senior environmental specialist with Iowa's DNR.

Albaugh is responsible for doing site-testing and cleaning up the site, Cook explains. Albaugh has consultants analyzing the soil and groundwater, Cook says, and the cleanup will be based on their findings.

Albaugh knew going into the project that he was assuming responsibility for the hazardous cleanup, Cook says, so environmental cleanup expenses would have been factored into the initial project cost estimates.

Albaugh did not respond to Cityview's request for an interview.The person who represents DRA Properties on Prairie Trail is Ted Rapp, who said he was too busy for an interview.

The key government players say that no decision has yet been made on how Ankeny's contaminated land will be "remediated" - in other words, how the cleanup will be handled.

However, it's likely that in the areas planned for residential development, the contaminated soil will be hauled away, Cook says. "You don't want your child playing in the backyard with his toys, and playing with contaminated soil."

Cook says there's a good chance that the most heavily contaminated areas - the old dump, wastewater treatment plant and sewage lagoons - will be capped with a two-foot layer of topsoil and covered with grass to create public green spaces.

The environmental standards are stricter for housing subdivisions than for parks, Cook explains. "People don't usually dig in parks."

Basically, Cook says, there are only two cleanup options available: carting away the contaminated soil, or covering it up.

Lingering rumors

On top of what the EPA knows, there are lingering rumors about what else may have been buried on that land secretly, years ago in the dark of night, when the Ames Research Lab was covertly working on the Manhattan Project to beat the Nazis to the atom bomb.

Resident Dale Stull has heard all the rumors about waste uranium secretly buried on that land while the munitions plant was operating. "Nobody seems to be able to really verify it," Stull says. "Some of them said if the money was right, they'd forget all about it."

Ankeny resident Richard Logli has heard those same stories through the years. "There's been talk of that, but it's never been proven," he says.

The stories might be true, Logli says, or they might not. "It's just one of those things. It might be political. I have no idea."

When Cityview first began asking U.S. EPA staff about testing for radioactive materials at the Ankeny site, people initially said the test had been done years ago.

The EPA's Dan Garvey, project manager in charge of the Superfund cleanup, initially said the test had been done before he signed onto the project, and "to the best of my knowledge [it] did not come up with anything."

When asked for a copy of the test results, EPA staff checked through files and eventually referred Cityview to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, which is overseeing Albaugh's part of the Ankeny cleanup.

But it turns out that Iowa DNR's Cook didn't have that report, either. "The DNR does not do anything with radiation," Cook says. "You have to go to the Department of Public Health."

The health department's Dan McGhee, a nuclear physicist who works in the Bureau of Radiological Health, said he participated in a study with ISU.

"The instrumentation that we used would have detected anything that was buried at least a foot down," McGhee says. He says the water samples and general soil readings showed no evidence of buried uranium. "I know about these rumors," he says. "At least six years ago, we thought we had put them all to bed."

McGhee contends that even if uranium is buried there, anything more than a foot deep is not a threat to public health because people don't come in contact with it.

McGhee argues that people are overly afraid of radioactive materials, partly because of the old movies showing creatures like Godzilla forming as genetic mutations caused by radiation. He calls this the "the green-slimy-monster-coming-out-of-the-swamp syndrome."

ISU's Department of Environmental Health and Safety prepared an April 2002 report on the research that McGhee participated in. In this report, ISU concludes that there is no evidence of radioactive material on land that ISU owned at that time.

"There are no records indicating that any uranium metal production work was conducted at the DMOP," the report states.

"Based on the historical record, the null hypothesis that the ISU Ankeny Research Farm was used as a production site for uranium metal during the Manhattan Project era is rejected," ISU's report concludes. "Rejection of the null hypothesis means that there are no impacted sites and no radiological characterization or scoping surveys are required."
What next?

Normally on Superfund projects, the EPA shares its cleanup plans with the public after all the plans are finalized. But with Prairie Trail, because of the rumors, the EPA plans to go public with its information earlier in the process, says Alyse Stoy, an attorney with the U.S. EPA.

Federal law requires the EPA to notify the public before the cleanup is done. "Here, we want to be sensitive to the community's concerns" by informing the public sooner, possibly sometime this fall, Stoy says.

The EPA is setting up a repository of records that will be available to the public, probably at Ankeny's public library, Stoy says. The documents will include technical investigations of the site as well as detailed cleanup plans.

"Things are moving at a brisk pace [with Prairie Trail], so hopefully we can clean this up and move forward," Garvey says. "I know the city's anxious to move forward up there. It's very desirable real estate."

Garvey says the EPA is willing to consider any new evidence that may surface about buried hazards on the site. "We're all ears to hear any credible new information," he says. "A lot of times the stories are credible. Sometimes the stories are stories."

Moerman says the city has heard plenty of rumors about the site.

"None of them came to be true," he says. The city never found evidence of anything radioactive, Moerman says. "All we know is what we've found has been very manageable for remediation."

The city expects about 3,000 new houses to be built in Prairie Trail, providing homes for 7,000 to 10,000 people. Moerman says build-out is expected to take seven to 10 years.

"We care about health. We care about safety," Moerman says. "We're going to remediate it at a very high level."

Many residents are looking forward to the visionary growth that's coming.

"I think it's going to be wonderful. I love it," resident Fred Bolte says. Albaugh is "so much for Ankeny, it's incredible. Good Ankeny family. He'll get it straightened out, and he'll donate back to the community."

Others are more dubious.

"Do we want to build something that's going to turn into a Three-Mile Island?" resident Pat Cahill asks. "If it's a dangerous spot, Ankeny has a right to know before we start building homes and schools and playgrounds." CV

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