Officials see MAPS 3 land as too valuable to ignore as downtown looks to grow south | OKG Scene.com (http://tinyurl.com/y8kt3vx)

Wonder if Mr. Williams has heard of the 2 EPA Superfund sites in the Downtown area? Granted neither are in the MAPS 3/Core to Shore area directly (both are located in the vicinity of MLK and just north of Reno), but as the article points out, there has been industrial contamination of the area (just might not rise to the level of Superfund status).

Region 6 | Superfund Redevelopment Program | US EPA (http://www.epa.gov/superfund/programs/recycle/live/region6_ok.html)


Double Eagle Refinery Co.
The Double Eagle Superfund Site occupies approximately 12 acres in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. From 1929 until the early 1980s, the Double Eagle Refinery facility re-refined used motor oils through a process of acidulation and filtration. This process generated approximately 80,000 gallons of oily sludge per month. ... The site is located near the popular Bricktown entertainment district, and popular tourist destinations such as Boathouse Row and the American Indian Culture Center, currently under construction. In order to help meet consumer demands brought by the anticipated large-scale tourism these sites will attract, Oklahoma City residents passed a GO Bond in 2007, which includes funding for streetscaping to encourage retail development of the neighborhood. The Double Eagle Superfund Site is currently being actively marketed as part of this redevelopment initiative.

Fourth Street Abandoned Refinery
The Fourth Street Abandoned Refinery operated as a waste oil reclamation facility from the 1940s until the early 1960s. Located in Northeast Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, approximately 1,000 people live within one mile of the site. The site was added to the National Priorities List in 1989. Cleanup of the Fourth Street Site mitigated 42,000 cubic yards of contaminated sludge, soil and sediments that if not remediated, would have been a potential source of exposure to a nearby minority community. Cleanup of the source contamination prevents future migration of contaminants to the ground water. An active industrial facility is currently operating on the westernmost tract, which is part of the original refinery property, but is now owned and operated by a separate individual. This tract is referred to as the Pipe Storage Yard, consistent with the active facility’s current operations. The Pipe Storage Yard contained buried sludge material beneath the site.


But it’s all good, the government says there isn’t any danger any more:


The National Priorities List (NPL) is the list of the most hazardous sites across the U.S. and its territories.

This site is cleaned up, is no longer a threat to human health, has been deleted from the NPL, and is known as a Deleted NPL site

Officials see MAPS 3 land as too valuable to ignore as downtown looks to grow south | OKG Scene.com (http://tinyurl.com/y8kt3vx)

Bad headline. Headline should read, 'MAPS 3 proposal environmental improvements" and not "environment concerns."