Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment

Resource Library > Technology Transfer > Programs and Initiatives > Performance-Based Management > Demonstrations

Accelerated Site Investigations: The McGuire AFB Triad Example


	Site map detailing extent of plumes at C-17 project

Objective: Utilize an expedited site assessment process to characterize soil and groundwater contamination and complete an interim removal action, if required, at a $27M MILCON project (C-17 hanger).
Background: The construction of a new hangar was scheduled to begin in May 2003. Groundwater contamination was detected in February 2003 with perchloroethene detected during the pre-construction sampling and contamination at a former oil/water separator site. The Air Force restoration group teamed with MILCON to develop a planned approach to address the contamination while still meeting the needs for the hangar construction. The objectives were to minimize construction delays, characterize soil and groundwater contamination, and complete removal action if required. It was determined that in order to meet the construction timeline requirements, an accelerated characterization approach was needed. The team was already poised to use such a method (i.e., Triad) method at another site.
Results: The remedial investigation (RI) for the site at McGuire AFB cost $654K. This included an interim RI for $454K and an estimated cost to complete RI (including installing and and sampling monitoring wells and generating the RI report) for $200K. The total RI effort took approximately 10 months of which the interim RI was completed in approximately 2 months and an additional 8 months to complete the RI phase.

Payoff: As a result of the success of the C-17 project, a full-scale Triad based study has been initiated at the Air Staff level. By being able to fully characterize the site in short a relatively short timeframe, a potential delay in the MILCON project, estimated to cost $27M, was able to be avoided. The 10 months it required to characterize the site is much shorter than the average time required to complete the same level of effort (approximately 60 months).

	Triad site RI	Average AF RI* Spill Sites (SS) only	Average AF RI* All Site Types
Cost	$650K	$898K	$636K
Duration	~10 months	62 months	69 months
* Averaged RI phase AFRIMS data for groundwater impacted sites with high groundwater relative risk.

Reasons for Success: There are several factors that attributed to the success at McGuire AFB. The team involved was aware and supported the Triad process. There was a very focused goal to the effort - the team wanted to have a MILCON/ERA success story to help serve as the baseline for other similar efforts both a McGuire and other Air Force installations. The was an exceptional regulatory resource commitment; 10 regulators were very involved in developing work plan. In addition, the contractors involved had previous Triad experience.

Accelerated Site Investigations: Restoration of Arctic Surplus Salvage Yard (ASSY), Fairbanks, Alaska


	Contractor and government officials discuss the situation at the old Artic Surplus site, a former salvage yard.

Site Description: The ASSY is a privately owned salvage yard near Fairbanks, Alaska. A portion of the site was formerly used as a military landfill. The salvage yard has been the site of piles of assorted old cars, military vehicles and other metal-containing material such as batteries and transformers for more than 50 years. Battery cracking and transformer burning by the site owners to recover metals caused extensive PCB and lead contamination of the soil. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC) identified the yard as a significant risk to human health and the environment after a site inspection in 1988. The soil was contaminated with significant levels of PCBs and lead. Piles of bulk asbestos and thousands of drums of liquid waste were also found. Following the States' concern, the EPA declared the yard a Superfund Site in 1990, placing it on the National Priorities List and naming DOD as a potentially responsible party (PRP). After an extensive site study in 1995, the EPA developed a plan to resolve the polluted site. The remedy called for washing the contaminated soil free of high-level PCBs. The low-level PCBs and rest of the soil would be combined and stabilized in a concrete mixture. The resulting solidified concrete was then placed over an old landfill on-site in a containment cell or "cap." More than $13.5 million was spent on site studies and cleanup activities by 1996. However, work on the cleanup came to a halt from 1996 through 2002. After years of disagreement and delays due to budget obstacles, the DOD tasked Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) as the lead-agency in the cleanup of the site.
PBM at the ASSY: DLA began their efforts in 2002 with the selection of an expert remediation team tasked with visiting the site and reviewing the 1995 EPA prepared Record of Decision (ROD). The PBM team was asked to review the ROD selected remedial actions (RA) to determine if there were alternate cost effective and risk protective remedial actions alternatives available for the site. The team recommended several modifications. The new proposal recommended solidification and stabilization of all waste soils contaminated with PCBs and lead, and placing it as a cover over the "Old Army Landfill."
PBM Results: The team of DLA and Air Force staff and their contractors, together with Alaska State and local personnel, successfully transformed the privately owned scrap-yard contaminated with lead, PCBs, solvents, ordnance material, and radiation wastes into a viable industrial site. Restoration was completed at the site in 7 months with a firm-fixed price contract for $3.45M. Thus, through implementation of these PBM recommendations, the RA cost was reduced from $38 million to under $3.5 million, and the remediation time was shortened from 4 years to just over one year. In addition, the original proposal rendered the property unusable for the foreseeable future, while the PBM proposal allowed for unlimited industrial use of the land with the exception of the landfill that will have land use controls and institutional controls. Today, as the site nears remedial action completion with regulator concurrence, all parties agree that the site is more protective of human health and the environment than the earlier, more costly decisions allowed. Download an overview presentation of the effort at the Arctic Surplus Salvage Yard (AASY), Fairbanks, Alaska.
Reasons for Success:
1. Streamlining the process:
  - The PBM team comprised a group of engineers and scientists from the Air Force, DLA, US EPA, and ADEC. The dedicated group worked as one team under DLA's leadership to find the optimum solutions to cleaning up the site as efficiently and effectively as possible.
  - After reviewing project records, the team made several suggestions resulting in reducing remediation costs from $38 million to $3.45 million and reducing by half the amount of time needed to complete the cleanup. The entire site cleanup cost was $9 million, which included UXO and radioactive removal actions. The team recognized that PCB solvent extraction was not necessary and also recommended changing the design of the landfill containment cap to a flat design. The new cap allows the area to be used in the future for parking or storage of vehicles and equipment. DLA - along with DRMS, the Air Force and Army - secured the $9 million through he Pentagon's Defense Environmental Restoration Account.
2. Management and Oversight:
  - The unexpected discovery of spent munitions and low-level radioactive parts such as shell casings, training rockets and instrument dials in some of the scrap piles was initially a set-back for the cleanup team. However, the team pushed ahead through the winter months to keep the delays to a minimum. Over 100,000 individual pieces of spent munitions were inspected and 334 energetic items were found that included small arms, cartridge primers, cartridges with propellant and incendiary devices and a fragmentation bomb with a live fuse. After finding the items, unexploded ordnances technicians from Eielson AFB were called in to dispose of the unexploded items promptly and at minimum costs to the site.
  - The Alaskan climate proved to be another management challenge that was overcome. Even though the winter was a moderate one, sometimes the temperatures reached 40 degrees below zero. Daylight hours available for work were limited. The tedious work consisted of breaking down each pile with a backhoe and segregating the scrap. More than 70,000 cubic yards, about 3,500 truck loads of scrap had to be screened before leaving the site.
3. Efforts to increase community involvement
  - Although the US EPA was responsible under CERCLA for the community involvement related to the cleanup of the site, the team attended the many public meetings and presented on the progress of the cleanup and apprised the community of the technical options and challenges they were facing. Some meetings were not required by law, but demonstrated out-reach to inform the local community on what was going to happen at the site.
4. Efforts with site owners:
  - This site is unusual it that is owned by two private parties. DLA avoided costly litigation and delays by bringing site owners into proposed project actions. Several of these actions involved a win-win situation such as making a useful cap design over the old landfill. DLA also reached agreements with the site owners on moving items from the site such a scrap metal. Most importantly, after lengthy and complex negotiations, DLA obtained signed agreements with site owners on deed restrictions for institutional controls for ground water and the stabilized soil monolith. This will ensure that the remedy will not be comprised in the future by current owners or new owners. Both the US EPA and ADEC recognized this as a major accomplishment by DLA to protect the site.
5. Teaming with state, federal and local government agencies to improve restoration was what it was all about
  - The Arctic Surplus cleanup team included not only the DLA cleanup team but team members from the ADEC, US EPA Region X, and the local Fairbanks fire departments. Mr. Greg Light, Supervisor, ADEC Contaminated Sites Program, DoD Oversight Section summed it up when he was quoted as saying, "I am proud to be part of a team that worked so well together to accomplish our common goals of efficiently and effectively remediating this Superfund site, while ensuring health protection for Alaskans. I wish all my projects would run as smooth as Arctic Surplus."
  - DLA had a detailed meeting with the North Star Borough Emergency Operation Office, North Star Fire Department, Eielson AFB EOD, and other local emergency response personnel to explain proposed site work. Concerns included moving live UXO near residential homes that were near the site. First responders were extremely satisfied with the proposed work plan and outlined actions if an emergency would have occurred. During the project DLA had several follow up meetings with First Responders to keep them apprised of site activities. Because of excellent planning, DLA and their contractors working at the site had no safety accidents at the site, related to any site activities. It not only provided the local firemen with the opportunity to observe and feel satisfied that the site would be safe once the DLA team completed their efforts and returned home, but it educated them on the hazards of unexploded ordnance while saving them scarce training resources.
6. Minimized costs through optimization and innovative technologies:
  - The cleanup at the site was conducted using a fixed price remediation contract through AFCEE. This opportunity enhanced the use of innovative thinking and options. One example that the team proposed included inviting the local fire departments to conduct fire training exercises at the site to help neutralize pressurized tanks. That one proposal reduced by 90% the original estimate for neutralizing the tanks. Inviting the local fire departments to train at the site was also a gesture of partnership for the local community resulting in enhanced relationships.
  - The RPO team also recommended resampling the soils at the site, to provided better delineation of PCB hot-spots soils. This recommendation reduced the amount of original ROD estimate from 5,200 cubic yards to just 70 cubic yards for soils with high levels of PCBs.
US Air Force AF Florida Initiative: Demonstrating the effectiveness of the Triad approach to environmental site characterization
- Background: Recently, McGuire AFB, New Jersey, successfully implemented the Triad approach developed by the US EPA. This approach supported an accelerated site characterization at McGuire AFB, which in turn, resulted in completion of site investigations several years earlier than originally scheduled and at a cost significantly below the original estimates. The Secretary of the Air Force for Environment, Safety and Occupational Health (SAF/IEE), requested that similar actions be implemented at other AF installations. In that spirit, HQ AF/ILEVR, in coordination with AFCEE is implementing the AF Florida Initiative to verify Air Force-wide applicability of the Triad process.
- Objectives: Utilization of this approach will meet the requirements detailed in AFPD 90-8 Environmental, Safety, and Occupational Health and the Air Force Policy Letter Air Force Military Natural Infrastructure Management Policy, which mandate that restoration of contaminated sites be conducted under performance-based management principles.
  
  The objective of the AF Florida Initiative is to demonstrate that the Triad approach can be executed by a variety of contractors to effectively characterize a wide variety of sites. Final site characterization documents are anticipated for each of the locations. Once all three locations have completed site characterization, a document detailing the combined lessons learned will be produced by AFCEE/TDE.
- Initiative Sites: The purpose of the Florida Initiative Program was to promote implementation of the Triad approach at three USAF facilities in the state of Florida and also to position the Air Force for future application of this approach in order to meet new performance based management initiatives. Current characterization practices include a multistage investigation process intended to provide sufficient site information to construct a Conceptual Site Model (CSM). These current practices have lead to delays in restoration of sites at substantial costs. Triad attempts to characterize sites in a single staging event. This single staging program requires more funding then traditional practices, however subsequent field efforts and staging are eliminated generating some cost avoidance, but more importantly, saving time.
  Florida Triad Initiative Results:
  Five Areas of Concern (AOCs) at the Avon Park AF Range (Lead MAJCOM: ACC) were investigated using the Triad approach. Site investigation activities targeted soil and groundwater within the AOCs for TOCs, VOCs, and metals for analysis. The original estimated project cost to reach Remedy In Place (RIP) was $8M. All sites are either approved for closure or are ready for remedial action. The revised estimate for total project cost to reach RIP is less than $3M.
  
  Two AOCs at MacDill AFB, (Lead MAJCOM: AMC) were selected to be included in this program. Both AOCs have well defined boundaries. One AOC was a former pesticide shop and the other was an area of alleged lead contaminated soil and sediments. The original estimated project cost to reach RIP was $525K. With the discovery of three large underground fuel storage tanks, the total cost to reach RIP has been revised to $1M.
  
  One AOC at Hurlburt Field, (Lead MAJCOM: AFSOC) was selected to be included in this program. Site investigation and characterization activities at this AOC were focused on Trichloroethylene (TCE) contamination in groundwater. The full extent of the plume required delineation. The original estimated project cost to reach RIP was $3M. Total project cost through a completed Statement of Basis is estimated to be $850K. This site may be completed with implementation of a groundwater Land Use Control (LUC).