Colorado River Basin - Department of Defense (DoD)
Contact: Kai Dunn - (760) 776-8958
Department of Defense Installation Restoration Program
The Installation Restoration (IR) Program was developed by the Department of Defense (DOD) to identify and investigate potential hazardous waste sites at military bases. The IR Program consists of three phases: Remedial Investigation; Feasibility Study, and Remedial Action. The Remedial Investigation defines the presence and extent of contamination; the Feasibility Study evaluates various corrective alternatives, and the Remedial Action phase implements the chosen corrective alternative. The Regional Water Quality Control Board oversees these phases to ensure the IR Program has adequately addressed water quality concerns of the state.
There are four military installations within the Colorado River Basin Region: the Salton Sea Test Base (SSTB); the Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range (CMAGR); the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (MCAGCC) at Twenty-nine Palms, and the Naval Air Facility at El Centro (NAFEC). Most of the contamination to soil and ground water at these facilities is due to petroleum hydrocarbons. No facility has hazardous sites that qualify for the National Priorities List (NPL).
The following describes the status of the sites as of April 1998. The SSTB is in the final stages of the IR Program, having completed remedial action at all identified IR sites. It will be the first military base to close in the Colorado River Basin Region. The CMAGR has less than ten IR sites. These are scheduled to complete remedial action in 1998/1999. NAFEC has seventeen IR sites, and MCAGCC has over thirty. Most IR sites at these facilities are closed, or in the remedial action phase. Innovative state of the art technologies have been implemented with great success at these facilities, particularly in regard to remediating petroleum hydrocarbon contamination. MCAGCC has significantly reduced hydrocarbon contamination to soil and groundwater by optimizing bioremediation/natural attenuation. NAFEC extracted approximately 200,000 pounds of hydrocarbons from clay-rich soil, and groundwater using an in situ fluid injection with vacuum extraction system.