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"A landmark agreement between two federal agencies today will result in a cleanup at part of the Bannister Federal Complex where workers have complained of health problems. The agreement targets the roughly 40 percent of the complex owned by the General Services Administration. The GSA will begin immediately assessing the pollution at its site and will provide a work plan in 60 days, according to the agreement. The Environmental Protection Agency engineered the agreement, which is legally binding and sets up penalties if investigations, analysis and excavation of chemicals are not done properly or within a certain schedule. The agreement states it is not any sort of admission by GSA."

"The Environmental Protection Agency has tested the air for contaminants at a 310-acre federal complex in south Kansas City that houses facilities for the General Services Administration and the Department of Energy. Chris Whitley, a spokesman for the EPA's regional office in Kansas City, Kan., would not say what the agency was testing for, but said results were likely in the next day or two. "It's premature for us to talk about that for now," Whitley said Wednesday. Recent air tests conducted for the GSA at the Bannister Federal Complex detected trichloroethylene, or TCE, an industrial solvent and likely carcinogen. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources said the tests did not completely conform with testing protocols and recommended that they be redone. Whitley said the agency's Feb. 4-7 tests at the site in south Kansas City focused on a building housing a day-care center and another with GSA property manageme"

"U.S. Sen. Kit Bond on Wednesday called for a new federal investigation of health concerns at a sensitive Kansas City defense plant. In a letter to a federal investigator, Bond noted that he was responding to reports on KSHB-TV that more than 100 former co-workers at the federal complex on Bannister Road fear their illnesses may be linked to toxins at the facility. Bond asked the inspector general for the General Services Administration, which acts as the federal government's landlord, to advise him on "the full extent of the problem and what steps GSA is taking to protect employees deemed at risk.""

"The top official of Kansas City's General Services Administration wants a cancer investigation to be expanded to include not only current workers but former workers at the Bannister Federal Complex. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) began a review of current employees who have experienced cancer recently. But Jason Klumb, newly appointed regional administrator of GSA, said the highest number of questions about worker illnesses is coming from the former employees."