FACT SHEET
Clean up of Unexploded Ordnance
at the Ft. Ord Superfund Site
Ft. Ord, located in Monterey County, California, is a former military training ground. Its many uses included target practice. These uses even included training exercises involving various chemical warfare materials. As a result of these uses, a great number of bullets, bombs, and other projectiles, which the Army calls Unexploded Ordnance or UXO for short, are left scattered around the base. Obviously, UXO, with its danger of blowing up, is of great concern to anyone who will be on Ft. Ord after the Army transfers the land to civilian use.
The Army has been trying to clean up the UXO for a number of years. In May of 1997, the Army released a study called a Phase I Engineering Evaluation / Cost Analysis or Phase I EE/CA. The Phase I EE/CA is a study to see if the Army did an adequate clean up on the parts of Ft. Ord for which the clean up is finished. The Fort Ord Toxics Project hired technical experts to evaluate the Phase I EE/CA. The experts found the following problems
* The Army's initial investigation to determine how much UXO is out there may not have been adequate. If the initial investigation did not properly identify the problem, then it is impossible to tell whether a proper solution to the problem was put in place.
* There are a variety of technologies to find UXO that may be better than the technology that the Army has used so far. However, the Army does not explain why it did not try to use any of these advanced technologies.
* The Phase I EE/AC determined whether a certain piece of land was clean enough based on what the Army expects that piece of land to be used for in the future. However, there is no explanation of how the Army will go about further clean up of a piece of land if land use changes in the future.
Similarly, the Army created a model to determine how dangerous Ft. Ord will be once the Army is done with its clean up of UXO. The Army needed to create this model because the Army is not trying to remove all of the UXO. The model assumed a certain number of people would be visiting difference parts of Ft. Ord once it is cleaned up. However, the Army did not explain where this estimate came from. The estimate seems to under estimate how many people will really be using the land in the future.
* The Army used a formula to determine what sort of UXO clean up they would do for various pieces of land at Ft. Ord. However, the formula gave very little value to public safety in its determination of how to clean up the UXO.
On July 2, 1997 the Army is scheduled to release its Phase II EE/AC so that the public may comment on it. The Phase II EE/AC will set out the procedures by which the Army will try to clean up UXO in the areas of Ft. Ord which the Army has yet to address.
For more information please contact:
Fort Ord Toxics Project
1760 Fremont Blvd, Ste. BU-5
Seaside, CA 93955
Tel: (408) 375-9464
E-mail: ordtoxics@aol.com
June 1997
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