Army Ammunition Board to help spread information about clean-up

DE SOTO, Kan. — A Restoration Advisory Board is being created to help discuss and share information about the 12-year clean-up process at the old Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant in De Soto, Kansas.

It’s one of the latest developments in the long process to clean up that site after the U.S. Army started creating power for rocket propellant for World War II in 1943. It was reactivated for the Vietnam War in the late 1960s before being used in the First Gulf War in the early 1990s before being decommissioned in 1998.

The Army identified 97 sites of varying sizes where it would need to clean up contamination in the ground on the more than 9,000 acres that make up the plant.

“We’re basically identifying each issue whether it’s a solid waste management issue or area of concern, plot it on the map, and we go after the remediation that way,” said U.S. Army Base Realignment and Closure Sunflower Ammunition Plant Program Manager Ian Thomas.

So far, the Army has remediated 56 of those locations with 24 of them getting the proper approval from regulatory bodies to be resold for redevelopment. That work is what opened the door for Panasonic’s $4 billion Electric Vehicle Battery Plant to start construction on 300 acres of the available and cleaned land.

The plan is to have all 97 locations remediated by 2028 and Thomas says the Army is still on track for that goal.

“We are close to where we would like to be but we’ve made significant progress over the last eight years,” said Thomas.

That work is a huge deal for De Soto, Kansas Mayor Rick Walker who is already enjoying Panasonic’s massive investment in his city and is looking forward to getting more land available for more development.

“It puts Kansas, Kansas City, and De Soto in the conversation for all of these big, mega projects that might be coming from all over the United States,” said Walker.

Already, a German company called H&T Recharge announced ut will spend $110 million and bring 180 more jobs to the Johnson County facility just because it needed to be close to Panasonic.

Even with those large investments, there’s plenty of room to go around. Walker says roughly 2,000 acres of the 9,000 acre plant is reserved for Johnson County Parks and Recreation. The University of Kansas and Kansas State University plan to use about 1,000 acres, and between 2,500-3,000 acres are slated for a commercial solar project.

“Easily over 2,000 acres will be available for projects like Panasonic to come in the future,” said Walker.

That’s what gets people like Overland Park resident Matthew Rhodes excited about what could come next.

“I think it’s fantastic,” said Rhodes.

“I think there should be a lot more of it, there’s a lot of open space and it’s good for everyone in this part of the state.”

Thomas says the project has been fortunate to have consisten financial support despite the fact that its funding is tied up in the Congressional appropriations process and Defense spending.

“With the environment today, the budget environment today, that may not be possible so we’re still keeping our fingers crossed we’ll continue to have the funding to be able to continue on without any breaks or gaps,” said Thomas.

He says it largely depends on consistently being able to compete with other priorities within all branches of the Armed Forces.

Panasonic last told FOX 4 that it’s still on target to start producing EV batteries in De Soto around March 2025.

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