The U.S. Department of Energy Ames Laboratory’s former chemical disposal site has been granted a clean bill of health so the Ames Lab can use it once again.

The Iowa Department of Public Health has declared the site fit for unrestricted use.

The department came to the decision after it was proved there are no risks to the community or to its water supply, said Steve Karsjen of the Ames Laboratory.

“[It was] a positive thing. We went from a contaminated site to one that is clean,” Karsjen said.

The IDPH will continue to monitor the groundwater below the site for the next five years, said Emery Sobottka, director of environmental health and safety at Iowa State.

“The annual monitoring of the site is part of our ‘checks and balances’ approach to any project like this,” he said.

The site was used for the disposal of radioactive materials left over in the Ames Laboratory from the Manhattan Project between 1958 and 1966.

Sobottka said in 1994, concerns about the buried pollutants affecting the groundwater prompted action to clear the site. The waste was dug up and sent to a waste area in Utah.

The Department of Energy, which funds the Ames Lab, worked together with ISU and other various groups to clear the site.

Kevin Teale of the IDPH said the clean up was “easy [in this instance] because of the cooperation of the landowners.”

The site has been subject to studies, said Don Flater, chief of the Bureau of Radiological Health for the IDPH. In two studies conducted by ISU, the land site was examined and water movement at the site was also researched, he said.

“After careful review and analysis of the data … we concur that the site should be released for unrestricted use,” Flater said.

The unrestricted waste site is on Scholl Road, east of the Applied Sciences Complex and just north of Ontario Street.

The site is a wooded area enclosed by a fence, Flater said.