The 17,000-acre site of the project was used for munitions during World War II and the Korean conflict. Declared a Superfund site in 1990, the soil is contaminated with wastes such as TNT. More than 400 people have wells within three miles of the site, using the water not only for drinking, but also for livestock and irrigation.
“We will develop a program to determine how much electricity is generated and the mass of contaminant removed,” says Dr. Curt Elmore, assistant professor of geological engineering at UMR, who is heading up the project.