Textron Aviation is performing air quality testing in 27 homes in an east Wichita neighborhood this winter after residents there learned of a decades-old chemical spill.
The Forest Hills neighborhood sits directly west of a Textron Aviation facility – formerly Beechcraft – near Central and Webb. In the early 1990s, a toxic chemical known as trichloroethene was detected in the groundwater underneath the facility and the Forest Hills neighborhood.
The chemical was used by Beechcraft in aircraft manufacturing before the 1990s.
In 2022, some residents learned the chemical still contaminated the groundwater beneath Textron and their neighborhood. Groundwater is separate from the city’s drinking water, a safe source to which all the Forest Hills properties are connected.
“I was talking with a neighbor about several neighbors around us with cancer diagnoses,” said Sarah Selmon, a Forest Hills homeowner. “And just kind of offhand said something like, ‘Is there something in the water here?’”
“And my neighbor said, ‘Yeah, there is actually something in the water. There's these testing wells all over our neighborhood. You didn't know?’ ”
Selmon said she didn’t – and she wouldn’t have moved to the neighborhood in 2012 if she had. According to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the chemical is a potential health hazard to the kidney and liver and has the potential to cause cancer.
In a statement, a company spokesperson for Textron Aviation wrote that they continue to monitor the groundwater quality in the area around its facility.
"Textron Aviation is in compliance with all its KDHE-approved plans and requirements regarding monitoring, testing and remediation," the statement read. "In addition, Textron Aviation has over time conducted several air quality monitoring projects in homes and commercial buildings in and near the Forest Hills neighborhood. Results of all such air quality testing consistently show no contaminants of concern at levels that would require mitigation."
Though Textron and formerly Beechcraft have undergone several cleanup efforts – including the excavation of contaminated soil and extraction of contaminated groundwater and soil vapor – the amount of trichloroethene in the groundwater still exceeds regulatory standards in some areas. One well in the Forest Hills neighborhood measured trichloroethene at about eight times the regulatory standard in 2022, though others fell below it.
The situation encouraged Selmon, and Forest Hills neighborhood association member Jason Brittain, to alert their community at an informal meeting last November.
“They were shocked,” Brittain said.
Marsh Martin is a homeowner who attended the meeting.
“We’d lived in this neighborhood for over 40 years and had no knowledge of any of this, which in itself kind of surprises me,” he said.
Selmon started asking the state for more air quality testing, in case the chemical evaporated into homes. Trichloroethene “evaporates quickly into the air,” according to KDHE.
Textron Aviation agreed to perform additional indoor air testing during the early 2024 winter season “to address these concerns and to act as a good neighbor,” according to a letter KDHE sent to 175 residents in the Forest Hills and Bonnie Brae neighborhoods.
The state said it received 36 inquiries about the site and/or indoor air testing from residents. Twenty-seven have signed agreements for indoor air testing as of Feb. 16.
Past indoor air quality testing in the neighborhood hasn’t identified any concerns, according to the letter KDHE sent to residents. Trichloroethene didn’t appear in any of the six residences tested in 2011.
Trichloroethene appeared in three of 10 homes tested in 2022 and 2023, though the levels fell well below state standards.
But the 2022 tests concerned Selmon and Brittain, despite the low concentration of the chemical in the air. Both the 2011 and 2022 air quality tests identified other chemicals in the air – acetone, benzene, tetrachloroethene and toluene, among several others.
Selmon and Brittain worry what the cumulative impacts of these chemicals might be on humans, even if none are more concentrated than the regulatory standard allows.
“Yes, this one (chemical) might be under the limit,” Selmon said. “But your body's not just dealing with the one.”
Jerry Williams owns one of the homes that tested positive for low levels of trichloroethene in 2023. The state informed him that it was possible that the chemical came from the groundwater.
“I wanted to move a long time ago, before I even heard about it,” Williams said. “And then after I heard about it, then it just made me that much more angry. … I'm definitely wanting to move.”
Selmon moved out of the neighborhood in September 2022, taking her four kids with her.
“We made the decision to move even though the KDHE doesn't think there's anything wrong with living here,” Selmon wrote in an email. Her family still owns a home in Forest Hills.
The state said the deadline to request indoor air quality testing in Forest Hills has passed.
Editor's note: This story was updated on Feb. 21 to include a statement from Textron Aviation.
