Book Examines Methods for Decontaminating Former Military Bases

Newswise — Former military bases often leave a legacy of a non-military sort when decommissioned " pollution and environmental degradation. A University of Arkansas researcher compares different methods for cleaning polluted former military bases in his new book and argues that an individual approach is the most effective way of recycling these former government facilities.

Political science professor Kenneth Hansen wrote "The Greening of Pentagon Brownfields: Using Environmental Discourse to Redevelop Former Military Bases," published in August by Lexington Books.

Of the 116 most polluted government facilities, 95 are military installations, according to Hansen. Clean up is estimated to cost tens of billions of dollars.

"Between World War II and the 1980s, before the military knew what they were doing was damaging to the environment, pollution was pretty widespread," Hansen said.

The pollution can be oil or gas, jet fuel, spent or live ammunition, hazardous materials, and in a few places even contaminants from stored nuclear weapons. Many of the polluted areas have contaminated groundwater caused by chemicals that have seeped into the water table. Such clean up is easy, but time-consuming, according to Hansen. Former military bases can be redeveloped to make use of the existing infrastructure. They generally are used for commercial development, and many become airports or universities.

In some cases, cleaning polluted military bases can be accomplished through a program called Superfund. Developed in 1980 to locate, investigate and clean up environmentally damaged sites nationwide, Superfund is administered by the Environmental Protection Agency. Its methods are effective but often involve delays, according to Hansen.

Delays are due to placement on the National Priorities List (NPL), a triage-like system in which the government deals with the most polluted sites first. Rehabilitation can take nearly a decade to complete.

"I bash Superfund a little bit because of the delays. It takes almost 10 years once the facility is put on the national priorities list," he said. "If you're trying to replace jobs you lost, 10 years is a long time."

Despite the delays, however, Hansen's quantitative data " acquired through surveys " showed that Superfund was more effective than expected. Of the three worst polluted case studies that used Superfund, two were able to fully recover and create more jobs than they had when the military occupied the site, Hansen said. A second technique is parcelization, which isolates the polluted section of the former base, so the rest of the facility can be used while clean up takes place. Parcelization aids Superfund by providing a solution to the problem of delays. Base conversion can take place as planned while the polluted Superfund site is waiting for the EPA to complete cleaning.

"If you can zone out the parts that are polluted until they can be cleaned up, it doesn't really affect what you're doing on the other parts of the property," Hansen said.

Another solution, called Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), is a cleaning technique designed to work from the ground up. BRAC puts the local community in charge of clean up, with the state government assisting where it can.

"The state operates as a mini-Environmental Protection Agency," Hansen explained. "Most cities are not equipped to deal with large environmental problems, so they turn to the state or contract with a private company or the Army Corps of Engineers to clean up. It's an intergovernmental solution."

Some communities rely on one method of clean up, while others use a combination of Superfund, parcelization and BRAC to do the job. No one technique works best, because each former military base has a unique infrastructure with a unique set of missions.

Hansen initiated his research into military base conversions as part of his dissertation. Environmental problems became a connecting theme in his research.

"I kept reading about these communities that glow in the dark, or facilities that glow in the dark," he said. "The golf course the community expects to make a lot of money on, turns out to be built on a toxic waste dump, so they go to the government and say 'what can we do?'"

As the complexity of the issue became apparent, Hansen realized the topic had grown beyond a portion of his dissertation and into a book.

"It seemed pretty apparent that this is widespread problem," he said. "I could've easily written my whole dissertation on it."

In most cases, cleaning up the former military bases is possible, Hansen said. It is also very important. He points out that by rehabilitating the land, the government is reusing and recycling something, as well as creating jobs for the community and improving quality of life in the community.

"A lot of positives come out of this," he said.