‘Future First’ initiative saves polluted land, allows bank construction

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Jake Richmond
  • 355th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
DAVIS-MONTHAN AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. --  In the 1960s, base personnel filled their gas tanks at the Army and Air Force Exchange Service station on the southeast corner of Comanche and Sixth.

The base has changed a lot since then.

Other things have changed, too - like the overall quality and sustainability of underground gas storage tanks and fuel lines.

In 2003, after the old gas station was demolished, the base called in a regional hazard-control company to remove the storage tanks. The company's remedial investigation revealed that there was significant petroleum-related contamination of the underlying soil.

This wasn't good news for the base, especially considering the plans to construct a new Bank of America branch where the gas station used to be.

According to Karen Oden, an environmental engineer and D-M's restoration program manager, those plans had to be put on hold immediately.

In the past, Ms. Oden said, soil contamination levels like those at the old gas station site almost certainly would have prevented future construction there for several years. The tainted land would have just languished, mostly because funding for environmental cleanup was so hard to come by.

Fortunately for everyone involved, Air Combat Command has a program specifically for situations like the one that was facing D-M and the bank. It's called "Future First Planning," or F2P.

When Robert Barrett, chief of ACC's environmental division, founded the initiative, he described it as "an effort to merge environmental cleanup, construction needs and base development into an integrated effort to support current and future land-use needs."

The initiative was born out of a need to accommodate "increased mission requirements and the resultant land-use constraints," Barrett said.

It wasn't long before the new program paid dividends at D-M. Ms. Oden, who headed up the endeavor, said the immediate funding availability was crucial to the initial cleanup efforts at the site of the old AAFES station.

"We were able to fast-track the project because of the F2P initiative," she explained. "Plus, it really motivated (all parties) to work as a team right from the beginning."

With the necessary funding in place, the base embarked on further efforts to assess the overall extent of the contamination. Environmental and civil engineers performed soil gas studies to pinpoint the locations of the polluted ground and drilled holes in the earth to test the depth of the petroleum leakage.

They found that the gas had seeped down several hundred feet, Ms. Oden said, but there was also good news: They found that the contamination stops well before the deep-down groundwater aquifer. Subsequent tests of the groundwater itself confirmed the findings.

After D-M's own investigation, the bank also hired a private environmental consulting firm to do their own study. The results matched up, and construction plans were back on.

The next step for the team of planners, engineers and construction specialists was to put some protective measures in place. First, they removed the first ten feet of contaminated soil and replaced it with new, clean soil. Then, they installed an extraction system to literally suck the harmful vapors out of the ground.

"It's got a thermal oxidation unit that destroys the vapors once they're sucked out," Ms. Oden said. "It basically burns and breaks down the contaminants into a form that has no impact on the atmosphere." She added that the base has an air permit to allow the system to operate, and it has maintained a zero-percent rate of hazardous emissions.

Then, as a further precaution, the team installed a high-density polyethylene membrane directly below the site of the new bank building. The membrane forms a barrier that prevents harmful gas from rising through the soil into the structure above.

Ms. Oden said the cleanup process was completed in 2005, and the land was ready for construction. Then, the base and the bank began their work on the leasing agreement.

The building's construction was finished earlier this year, and the bank is now preparing to open its doors to the people of Davis-Monthan Nov. 30.

The team effort of all parties, Ms. Oden said, was the main reason a forsaken parcel of land is about to become truly useful property.

"There were so many players involved, and we all had a common goal," she said. "We came to the table early to talk about what each party needed. Once we determined our objectives, everybody just worked really well together to streamline this process and make it work."