Superfund Cleanup in Alaska.

• Author: SWAGEL, WILL

In the past it was common practice to dump solvents used to clean equipment into the ground when finished. Today, we know better.

You could hardly pack more negative wallop into a phrase than to say, "This property is a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site." Invoking the Superfund label means evoking memories of worst environmental disasters and the specter of huge, bankrupting cleanup costs.

But in Alaska, what are commonly referred to as "Superfund" sites--those on the EPA's National Priorities List-turn out to be not the result of sudden disaster, at all, but of past decades of sloppy handling of toxic substances, then just considered business as usual. Although a handful of private sites have reached the EPA's NPL, those most active today in Alaska are exclusively U.S. Department of Defense installations: Eielson Air Force Base, Ft. Wainwright, Elmendorf Air Force Base, Ft. Richardson and the Naval facilities at Adak.

"The Army has made noble efforts to become a good steward of the land, in terms of (present day) waste management practices," says Diane Soderlund, an Anchorage-based EPA project manager. "(But) standard practice at one time was to use solvents to clean equipment. And when your solvent was spent, you dumped it out the back door. Nobody thought, 'I'm going to be contaminating ground water when I do this."'

It's Always Water

Ft. Wainwright in Fairbanks is one of the largest and most long-lasting Superfund cleanup sites in Alaska. Soderlund says that 70 contamination sites at Wainwright were originally identified, then the smaller units were combined into a handful of larger administrative units.

Some of Wainwright's stickiest problems have come from groundwater that is contaminated with benzene and other petroleum products. Contaminated soil can be dug out and treated or disposed of, but with groundwater problems "there's no quick fix," says Soderlund.

To try and dispel some of the most volatile materials, Army contractors have been drilling holes into the aquifer, then pumping in air. When that same air is later pumped out, it has mixed with fumes. The introduction of the oxygen in the air also hastens biodegrading of the contaminants by microbes. Still, says Soderlund, the process may go on for years--and other parts of the cleanup will still be underway decades hence.

At Ft. Richardson just outside of Anchorage, another Superfund NPL site, efforts are ongoing to reduce the effects of contamination from...