Depth vs. Cost at Fort Ord

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

At last week's public meeting on the cleanup at Fort Ord, the Army
presented interesting new data that contradicts assumptions in earlier
Army document on the cleanup of unexploded ordnance at the former Army
base.

In the now abandoned Phase 2 EE/CA (Engineering Evaluation/Cost
Analysis) for unexploded ordnance removal at Fort Ord, the Army argued
that it was not cost effective to do much subsurface clearance within
the property's 8,000-acre impact area. Data from other sites indicated
that clearance costs would grow substantially where crews removed
ordnance and other anomalies beneath one foot below the surface. For
that reason, the EE/CA recommended surface or one-foot clearance for the
categories of open space that are expected to dominate the future use of
the impact area.

Recently, however, the Army analyzed 22 relatively small ordnance
clearance projects already conducted at Fort Ord. Over a million
metallic anomalies - relatively few of which were live munitions - were
found and removed through those efforts. The Army found that 27% of the
anomalies were found on the surface and another 68% were found in the
top foot of soil. Only 6% were found between the one-foot and four-foot
level. 

Thus, it concluded that the actual incremental cost of the deeper
clearance - that is, in the one to four-foot range - represented a small
increase in overall costs. It found a closer association between cost
and the number of anomalies per acre.

The single data table that the Army handed out and the short briefing
didn't answer all the questions about the likely costs of clearance at
Fort Ord, but the Army's report may make it possible to justify clearing
wider areas to a four-foot depth. 

The Fort Ord results might not be replicated elsewhere. Ordnance and
ordnance scrap may be concentrated near the surface there because of the
high sand content in the soil, as well as the predominant historic use
of the area by infantry and artillery units, as opposed to aerial
bombers and naval gunners.

Lenny Siegel

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Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 222B View St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/968-1126
lsiegel@cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org