Long Forgotten--Far From Gone: USACE scrubs away at $1 billion of environmental liability.

• Author: Simonelli, Isaac Stone
• Position: ENVIRONMENTAL

With an estimated billion dollars of remediation projects left to manage in Alaska alone, it's a long road for the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Alaska District to clean up formerly used defense sites in the state. Nonetheless, the USACEAlaska District has been steadily chipping away at the herculean effort since October 17, 1986, whittling the list of properties that need to be investigated for possible remediation from 137 to 60.

"We're working on almost forty to forty-five of those actively," says Ken Andraschko, the USACE-Alaska District's Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) program manager.

The FUDS program was created in the '80s to tackle environmental contamination at properties formerly owned, leased, possessed, or used by the military. Because of Alaska's key strategic location, especially during World War II and the Cold War, the program is of particular importance.

"As far as priority goes, we generally do the riskiest first," Andraschko says. "We also work in conjunction with our state regulators, the EPA, and land managers to review our sites and determine a priority status for those sites."

Much of what is left to be investigated and cleaned up in Alaska are remote locations among the Aleutian Islands, which were rapidly developed by the military in response to the Imperial Japanese Army occupation of the Alaska islands of Attu and Kiska in June 1942.

"The less risky ones, per se, were out in the Aleutian, and that's generally what we have left," Andraschko explains.

Cleaning Contaminants

The USACE uses a rating system when deciding what projects to tackle. It weighs a site's potential risk to human health and human safety, as well as negative environmental impacts due to contaminants.

The typical contaminants found during the investigation stage of a potentially contaminated site in Alaska include lead, oil, diesel, gas, and chlorinated solvents, explains Matthew Flynn, Ahtna Engineering's program manager for the USACE small business environmental remediation services contract.

Ahtna Engineering has been awarded a five-year contract with USACE, which contracts out both the investigations of potentially contaminated sites and the remedial work.

"For World War II [sites], we're getting pretty good at these, we've been doing a lot of these investigations and clean ups," Flynn says. "So, we have a pretty good list of things to go looking for, mostly petroleum products, diesel, gas, a little bit of motor oil here and there. Occasionally, we'll find a chlorinated solvent. You know, we're always on the lookout for that kind of stuff."

Chlorinated compounds, such as tetrachloroethene (PCE) and trichloroethene (TCE), are of particular concern because they are very toxic to both humans and animals at very low concentrations.

"While some fuel-related compounds are toxic at low concentrations (benzene for instance), they tend to volatilize readily and naturally...