The city of Keokuk said it’s making progress in efforts to clean up and redevelop the abandoned Elkem Carbide property at 365 Carbide Lane.
The city has received $8.5 million from the U.S EPA since 2023 to assist with the work. It is the largest pool of EPA brownfields assessment and cleanup funding for a single site in EPA Region 7, which includes Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas.
“It is significant,” said Keokuk Mayor Mark Smidt.
EPA representatives visited the city to take a look at how the cleanup is coming along at the 80-acre site.
Jim Macy, Regional Administrator for EPA Region 7, said the work has included the demolition of buildings, assessments of what’s in the ground, and how the city will address it.
“Just a holistic approach of what’s going on to clean up this property, to put it back up on the market, have a developer come in, and if they can salvage a couple of the buildings and revitalize those, that would just be icing on the cake,” he said.
The Elkem Carbide plant housed a zinc smelting facility and manufactured carbides. The EPA has said the site is polluted with toxins such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, metals, and inorganic contaminants.
Macy said it’s important to have plans both for cleaning up a site and redeveloping it. He said Keokuk has shown the ability to partner with state and federal resources to make that happen.
“This community has the secret sauce into how to make that happen because they’ve achieved over $8.5 million in federal capitalization to grow the community, to turn these blighted areas into blooming flowers,” Macy said.
While in Keokuk, the EPA also marked the awarding of $1 million grants each to the city of Burlington and the Southeast Iowa Regional Planning Commission.
Burlington will use its grant to start working on the long-abandoned Klein Memorial Hospital property on Madison Ave.
City Manager Chad Bird is certain the city will need to remove asbestos and a couple of leaky underground storage tanks from the property.
“We want to get that old building demolished, and then we want to convert that area into some residential housing,” Bird said.
“We have already been in conversations with some economic development folks about getting residential there once it’s clean. So we’re already moving that far down the road.”
The hospital building dates back to 1962. It closed in 2009.
Bird said the city acquired the site from the out-of-state owner a couple years ago after many years of trying to get something done with it.
“And the city, of course, like many sites like this, has had to chase nuisance abatement from the previous owner. Mow the yard. Fix the broken windows. All that kind of stuff,” he said.
Bird said the city will also put some of the EPA grant funding toward a pair of industrial sites.
He said it would be difficult, if not impossible, to move ahead on these projects without the EPA funding.
“We struggled to find the funding to take care of these types of things, especially the assessment, cleanup, and demolition. Those are expensive propositions, so this is an opportunity for us really to leverage our own local dollars with these federal dollars,” Bird said.
“You can’t do anything without a cleaned up site. This is a big boost for us to get to that end.”
SEIRPC will use its $1 million grant for two projects each in Keokuk, Fort Madison, and Donnellson, according to Zach James, Assistant Director of SEIRPC.
He said the work can lead to redevelopment, attraction of new businesses or new housing units, or even just the cleanup of eyesores.
“It’s a combination of these things that ultimately will lead to an increased tax base, hopefully new jobs or new housing units, things like that,” James said.
“People should get engaged and be active and participate in these types of projects and help make our communities better.”
The Elkem Carbide project in Keokuk did not receive any additional funding during the recent EPA visit.
But Smidt said remediation is ongoing and will continue for another six months to two years. He also said the city is already thinking about how to market the site, even though it might be several years before it’s ready to be marketed.
Smidt, who’s been mayor for less than a year, praised the efforts of many people who worked through the years to secure EPA grants and get the city to this point.
“You really have to give credit to previous councils, previous mayors, previous administrators. When the EPA says this has been going on for a long time, this was something that was being talked about and worked on as far back as 2006,” Smidt said.
The EPA continues to support the project. The federal agency’s representatives said Keokuk has done a good job of seeking funding for it. They credited the community for being progressive and looking to make the abandoned property a good site in the future.
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