Environmental studies could allow Morris to purchase battery fire site

The City of Morris once again approved a contract Monday with the engineers at HR Green to test the soil at the former site of Superior Battery at 919 Benson St., which burned in June 2021, forcing almost 4,000 residents living within a half-mile radius out of their homes.

Mayor Chris Brown said HR Green will do soil boring testing and other things to see what needs to be cleaned up.

“Maybe they come back and say there’s too much here, you’re gonna have to get it turned into a Brownfield site and then go that route,” Brown said. “Phase 2 is going to determine a lot more of what direction we’re going to be going as a city.”

The Morris City Council approved Phase 1 in April, which allowed HR Green to do preliminary work in providing the city with guidelines on what needs to be done to make the land usable again.

“The ultimate goal is to purchase that property and hopefully get that to a green space,” Brown said. “That’s always been our thought since this has all happened, but it’s been in litigation. There’s been issues but in order for the EPA to recognize a good buy-and-sell of a hazardous property, between it being a paper mill and now the battery fire, you have to do due diligence and do a Phase 1 and Phase 2 before you can even start to talk negotiations.”

Brown said this process is important because if the city were to purchase the property outright, it would be liable for whatever is wrong with it.

“There’s less regulation because we want to make a green space as opposed to building homes on it,” Brown said. “They’ve pretty much already said it’s not a good place to put homes, so that’s why we’ve come back to make it more green space.”

If this space were to become a park, it would be similarly sized to Goold Park, which Brown said is seven acres.

The building at Superior Battery was being used to sore lithium batteries when it caught fire, which caused clouds of black smoke carrying hazardous chemicals to fill the air. The fire burned for almost two weeks.