Beginning in the late 19th century, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard went from three separate islands to one.
At first, the fill consisted of dirt, brick and wood.
:40 once it got more into the 1930s or later all kind of stuff went into the fill
That’s Iver McLeod from Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection.
The “all kind of stuff†McLeod refers to is all matters of hazardous material.
McLeod says the most contaminated site was the Jamaica Island Landfill.
That's a 25 acre site that served as the shipyard’s dump from 1945 to 1975.
There, officials found dangerous levels of petroleum, arsenic and lead.
Last year, that landfill was capped.
DEP’s Iver McLeod says the next project is capping what’s known as the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office or DRMO.
The facility is on the very southern part of Seavey Island and was used as a temporary storage site for scrap metal and paper wastes.
4:20 in that area they put sub electrical batteries, those aren’t your normal double A batteries, they are huge huge things, they were recycling lead, in doing so bits of lead got scattered all about soil, deep into it
And it doesn’t end there….officials still need to learn more about the Topeka Pier area…another landfill site with high concentrations of heavy metals.
Doug Bogan with the organization Clean Water Action is also a member of the shipyard’s Restoration Advisory Board.
He says another troubling area is called the battery acid tank.
1:00 this is a site where there was an underground tank, it was removed but there was a hole in it, a pipeline that ran into the tank was leaking, the soil is heavily contaminated with lead, it’s a small site but its right along the shoreline
Overall, according to DEP’s Iver McLeod, about 50 acres of the 287 acre shipyard are designated as Superfund sites.
That means the federal government has classified the most toxic areas of the shipyard as some of the most contaminated sites in the country.
The U.S. Navy is legally responsible for the clean-up, whether the shipyard stays open or is closed.
But Doug Bogan says so far, the Navy’s clean-up efforts have been slow.
He adds that, although the sites need remediation in the long term, in the short term, they pose no immediate threat, like contaminating the water supply.
He says if the base were to close, however, that could change.
4:32 they would expedite process, it would be good to have the process go faster than it has been, that’s something they’ll have to sort out, clearly if base was to be turned over need to civilian use they do need to clean up these sites, and protect the public if there was greater access to these lands
According to the Shipyard, the U.S. Navy has spent 48.6 million dollars cleaning up the yard.
The Navy estimates it'll need another 35 million dollars to finish the job.
And if the base remains opens, Shipyard officials say it will take until the year 2013 to clean up. .
In a statement, the Shipyard says it can’t speculate on hypothetical scenarios.
But in January, a Navy official said if the yard closed it could be cleaned up in two to three years.
11:15 if you do it in two to three years, I’ll say hooray for you, it will take forever to get the agreements to get it cleaned up
That’s Gil Hollingsworth, economic development director for the town of Vallejo, California.
That's where the Mare Island Naval Shipyard was closed in 1996.
Hollingsworth says clean-up didn’t really get going on Mare Island until six years later when the U.S. Navy agreed to give 131 million dollars to the town to hire a private developer to do the work.
He says, still, they are behind schedule.
1:30 we’re finding underground tanks no one knew about, they buried things and forgot about them, there’s considerable work to do, we are three years into a six year clean-up program, we are behind schedule because some of the things we have found
Like the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, the Mare Yard also repaired nuclear powered submarines.
And like Portsmouth, Gil Hollingsworth says no traces of nuclear contamination have been discovered on Mare.
But the extensive environmental problems they have run up against have slowed down re-development at yard.
Tim Ford, executive director of the Association of Defense Communities says that is a common problem for many communities facing base closures.
Ford says for the next round of base closures, he expects the Pentagon to be more upfront about what can be done with contaminated land.
18:37 the problem has really come down to that often when plans were developed, the community put that together without understanding the full scope of the environmental problem. And in some ways created plans that may not be feasible given the cost to clean up the land to develop for a certain use...
Craig Seymour is the Principal of RKG associates, a consulting firm in Dover that works to redevelop closed bases.
24:15 so you have landfills for example that are capped and the only thing you can do with a capped landfill for example may be to put a parking lot on it or to grass it and leave it alone so it can’t be redeveloped, individual building that have asbestos and lead, that can be taken out, so they can be re-used, but it has to be done cost-effectively
Iver McLeod from Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection says currently the capped landfill at the Shipyard has a baseball field on it.
If the shipyard were to close, he doesn’t know what would be the plans for the other more contaminated sites.
14:00 it’s tricky with that island because its shorefront property its very desirable for residential use, condominiums whatever, the proximity to boston, areas that are industrial now, like the DRMO area where they store scrap metal, that would be a highly prized residential site…
McLeod says currently Maine officials are negotiating with the Navy over the clean-up terms for the DRMO site.
He says although the site might never be used for condos, the state is still pushing for the highest level of clean-up there, and all across Seavey island.
For NHPR news, I’m RK
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