The University of Minnesota would get $13 million to put toward pollution cleanup at UMore Park under a proposed settlement with E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. and the federal government, ending a dispute over contamination left in the south metro by a World War II-era gunpowder plant.

DuPont designed, built and ran the Gopher Ordnance Works smokeless gunpowder facility on the site, which once spanned 13,600 acres in Rosemount and what was then Empire Township. The plant was briefly operational from November 1944 through August 1945. Some of the land was then returned to farmers, but about 8,000 acres was deeded to the U.

The proposed consent decree, which summarizes the settlement, is open to public comment until July 29, and then a public hearing will be held Sept. 4, before a judge decides whether to approve it.

“We’re happy to have reached an agreement with the federal government and hope for the court’s approval,” said Jake Ricker, a University of Minnesota spokesman.

The $13 million payment to the U would come “in return for a release of claims against the United States and DuPont,” Ricker said in an email.

The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the proposed settlement. Attorneys for the company referred questions to Chemours, a DuPont spinoff, and representatives there declined to comment.

The UMore Park land has had several uses after being deeded to the U in 1947.

The U.S. Army and Navy both leased land from the U for a period after that; hazardous substances were disposed of during those times, the lawsuit alleges. The U used the land mostly for lab waste and agricultural research for half a century.

About 2,800 acres in the area became the Vermillion Highlands, a wildlife and recreation area jointly administered by the U and the Department of Natural Resources.

More recently, the U had planned an ambitious, environmentally friendly development for 20,000 to 30,000 people at UMore, but those plans have stalled. Gravel mining in the area began more than a decade ago.

University officials filed the lawsuit in 2017, seeking to recover costs associated with cleaning up pollution on the property.

Because Gopher Ordnance Works was “never fully activated ... the magnitude of contamination at this site is actually pretty limited,” said Tom Higgins, manager of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s Superfund remedial section.

But UMore is on Minnesota’s Superfund list of hazardous waste sites being investigated and cleaned up through state and federal programs. The pollution — mostly arsenic, lead, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) — contaminated the soil in the north-central part of UMore, Higgins said.

The U’s lawsuit says it has performed “an extensive environmental investigation at a cost in excess of several million dollars to determine the source, nature and extent” of contamination on the site. Elsewhere in the lawsuit, the U said it has spent at least $3 million investigating the site.

DuPont and the United States both filed multiple countersuits, saying the site was eligible for assistance through the federal Superfund law. The United States also filed a counterclaim saying the U breached contracts that stated it would hold the federal government harmless for any liability related to pollution.

Higgins said the U has already gathered a trove of data about the site and is still working on a risk assessment and feasibility study of possible cleanup methods.

The easiest way to clean up contaminated soil near the surface is to excavate and remove it, Higgins said. From there, contaminants can be burned off “by applying tremendous heat” or the soil can be taken to a landfill approved to take hazardous waste.

“It’s my hope that we eventually can delist it from the state Superfund [list],” Higgins said, adding that the consent decree is a “net positive for everybody.”

Dakota County Commissioner Bill Droste, who served as Rosemount’s mayor for two decades, called the proposed settlement “a good thing,” noting that next year will mark 80 years since WWII ended. There were once 900 buildings on-site; many still remain on the east side of UMore in the form of concrete structures and foundations, he said.

Rosemount City Administrator Logan Martin said, “We’ve always wanted to see UMore get addressed as needed and I think it’s wonderful to see it happen.”

Martin said he hopes the proposed settlement could make way for more development of the land, if that’s the U’s vision.

The U recently sold off UMore land for two big projects: Amber Fields, a 479-acre housing development that borders Dakota County Technical College and is south of 145th Street E., and the Meta data center, slated for 280 acres in the property’s northeast section.