Clark County’s efforts to handle contaminated groundwater at Camp Bonneville are getting a lift from the U.S. Military.
On Tuesday, the county council accredited a contract modification to just accept $6 million in further funding from the Military for web site cleanup. The modification additionally extends the county’s contract with the Military to 2054.
Councilor Matt Little, one in every of two new councilors sworn in previous to the beginning of Tuesday’s assembly, advised shifting the dialogue out two weeks to offer extra time to evaluation the contract modifications and supply suggestions.
“It’s great that we’re going to have some money for monitoring and remediation. The big question mark I had here is that it changes … the end date, which would have been July 2026 to September 2054. That’s almost 30 years,” Little mentioned through the assembly.
Established in 1909, Camp Bonneville was created for navy coaching. Troops stationed at Fort Vancouver used the location as a drill area and rifle vary. A capturing vary utilized by regulation enforcement businesses, together with the Clark County Sheriff’s Workplace and FBI, remains to be in operation on the property.
The navy stopped utilizing the almost 4,000-acre web site in 1995. In 2006, the U.S. Military transferred possession of the property to the county.
Utilizing hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in grant funding from the Military, the county undertook efforts to clear the property of unexploded ordinance, explosive compounds, munitions and lead, in addition to clear up soil and groundwater contaminants.
In an October presentation to the county council, Kevin Tyler, supervisor for the county’s parks and lands division, mentioned 4 of the 5 contamination areas, referred to as Remedial Motion Models or RAUs, have been cleared.
Tyler mentioned there can be different alternatives for public engagement because the cleanup course of strikes ahead.
“We’re in the process of developing the remedial investigation and feasibility study. It’s a study of what are the alternatives that could be used to clean up the remaining contamination at Camp Bonneville. When that feasibility study is done, there will be a cleanup action plan,” Tyler mentioned, including the state Division of Ecology would oversee the cleanup course of and host public conferences to solicit suggestions.
Tyler mentioned the modification, the seventeenth for the reason that county signed the unique contract in 2006, additionally makes modifications to a number of the technical specs for cleanup of landfill No. 4, demolition space No. 1, in addition to groundwater contaminants.
Little later withdrew his movement to delay the vote, and the council unanimously accredited the contract modification.