Cleaning up military sites will cost $677M and last until 2099
A government program to clean up 503 contaminated military sites across Oklahoma will have cost an estimated $677 million by the time it concludes at the end of the century, Department of Defense records show. Tinker Air Force Base alone has required $277 million in evaluation and cleanup, with another $46 million needed between now and 2027, according to data released Thursday by Pro-Publica.
Cleanup at Will Rogers World Airport is expected to cost more than $7 million by the time it ends in 2021.
Elsewhere in the state, the removal of explosives, munitions, arsenic and lead is expected to last until the year 2099. One site, deemed “high risk” by the federal government, is a popular hunting spot.
Defense Department records explain, for the first time, the extent to which military installations have polluted the earth and water around them. They also detail the extensive, centurylong effort necessary to remedy such contamination.
At Tinker, the state’s largest employer, a firing range has contaminated the soil beneath it with lead and a $1.1 million cleanup effort began there in October. Cleanup of contaminated groundwater in the AWACS sector will take place in 2021.
Though the Defense Department expects environmental work at Tinker to end in 2027, monitoring is expected to last until 2058.
Contamination cleanup at the base dates back to 1985, when an industrial waste pit was decontaminated. Records show several landfills have undergone cleanup after polluting nearby groundwater and soil, costing millions of dollars.
In 2005, $4.3 million was spent to remove an underground plume of the carcinogen trichloroethylene that was 2,000 feet long and 1,000 feet wide, according to Defense Department records. In 2006, another plume of trichloroethylene, 750 feet in length, was found to be encroaching on nearby water supplies, costing $3.1 million to clean up.
A Tinker Air Force Base spokesman said Friday that the base did not have a comment at this time.
At Will Rogers World Airport, an aviation gasoline spill is expected to cost $2.7 million to remedy and another $2.7 million is set aside for a stormwater drainage area with hazardous runoff. Final cleanup actions are expected to take place in September of 2019.
There are two sites in eastern Oklahoma that currently pose a high risk to human health and the environment, according to Defense Department records.
Underneath the former Oklahoma Ordnance Works facility in Mayes County, which produced military explosives between 1946 and 1956, is a number of dangerous contaminants, including arsenic and trinitrotoluene, better known as TNT. About $1.6 million has been spent on cleanup since 1998 and another $5.16 million is expected to be spent between now and 2028.
At Camp Gruber, an Oklahoma Army National Guard facility and hunting spot southeast of Muskogee, explosives and munitions have contaminated the soil with lead, barium and other metals, including high levels of iron. Cleanup will cost $26.3 million and last until 2041, according to the Defense Department. The site is expected to undergo environmental monitoring until 2076.
A request for comment from the Oklahoma National Guard was not answered Friday.
No Oklahoma military installation has more hazardous sites than the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant. Pentachlorophenol, which is banned in 90 countries because it’s likely cancer-causing, was found in groundwater just a half-mile from Brown Lake, the plant’s drinking water supply.
Lead has been discovered in the soil there, and TNT was seen in the soil. More than $25 million has been spent on cleanup since 1990 and another $4.7 million is expected to be spent between now and 2045, the records show.
At Fort Sill in southwest Oklahoma, work is complete. In the quarter-century between 1990 and 2015, the Defense Department spent $28.2 million evaluating and removing explosives, munitions and hazardous substances, though some prohibitions on drinking water and land use remain.
At Altus Air Force Base, cleanup of contamination across 29 hazardous sites is expected to last until 2099, records show. About $63.6 million has already been spent and another $44.7 million is necessary. The good news for those at the southwest Oklahoma base: Contamination is not expected to pose a high risk to health, according to the Defense Department.
“Contamination is on base and measures ... are in place to protect onbase workers,” the Pentagon wrote in reference to a spill site containing trichloroethylene, arsenic and 30 other contaminants. “Groundwater is not considered a potential drinking water source (and is) not currently used.”
The Clinton-Sherman Air Force Base, which was open for only 15 years in the 1950s and 60s, requires 94 years and $27.7 million to decontaminate, the Defense Department estimates. A skeet range there contains 14 contaminants in the soil and will be polluted until 2093. More than $6 million was spent in 2006 to remove high levels of mercury and other pollutants.
“Incidental exposure is possible to workers at the site, nearby residents and cattle,” the Defense Department wrote at the time, noting the former base was now an industrial park operated by the city of Clinton.
In the southwest town of Manitou — population 181 — $3 million was needed to rid an old missile silo of trichloroethylene, the fatal toxin selenium and chloromethane, which may cause birth defects. Not far from there, in Sayre, a World War II bombing target will require nearly $3 million for cleanup. The expected cleanup date is in September of 2083.