Busy field season planned at tank farm
A site-wide search for contaminants using ultraviolet screening technology should make for one of the largest, single field seasons of cleanup work this coming summer at the former U.S. Army tank farm on Lutak Road.
“We’re going back to recharacterize the site as a whole and pick up little pieces here and there… It’s a big job,” said Anne Marie Palmieri, who oversees work at the site for the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s contaminated sites program.
The coming summer’s work will be discussed at a meeting of the Haines Restoration Advisory Board, a federally-created citizens’ group that follows and advises cleanup efforts, that meets 7 p.m. Thursday, April 23, at the Chilkat Center. Officials with the Army, Army Corps of Engineers, and environmental cleanup firms North Wind, Inc. and Bristol Environmental will be on hand.
A 1995 “remedial investigation” took a comprehensive look at the site at 3 Mile Lutak Road, but took limited samples, Palmieri said this week. “The focus at that time was keeping the contamination within the (facility’s) perimeter fence.”
The ultraviolet optical screening tool (UVOST) uses underground probes which fluoresce petroleum and send information back to a computer, effectively mapping contamination, including concentrations, Palmieri said.
The technology is much faster and cheaper than drilling wells to take samples, and should result in much more information, Palmieri said. “It gives you instantaneous results. It allows you to make decisions in the field. It should be great.”
North Wind last year completed a “data gap summary report,” pinpointing areas on the hillside acreage that should be further examined for contamination. It will use that report to guide the screening tool.
“North Wind investigated every possible source of contamination. They were very thorough in their research. They’re basing their investigation on that report,” Palmieri said. “We have areas of known contamination. It will be interesting to see what’s at various tank locations. Not all areas around tanks were sampled and analyzed.”
Areas of known contamination include at a “pigging station” that was located just inside the facility’s gate, at a valve there and around a large tank designated “Tank 100.”
A summary of this summer’s work is expect by summer 2016, including the nature and extent of contamination and a risk assessment identifying exposure pathways of contamination and calculating risks.
It was unclear this week whether all the UVOST work can be done this summer, Palmieri said. “That’s their plan but it depends on what they find. If they find more, it will take more samples and probes.”
The 13-tank facility opened in 1955 and for 16 years was connected to Fairbanks by a jet-fuel pipeline to air bases there. Pipeline usage was discontinued in 1971. The tanks were used for storage until 1988.
Cleanup work completed to date has included:
∙ excavating and disposing of contaminated soil outside the tank farm perimeter fence at the Tanani and Lutak burn pits;
∙ removing the fuel pipeline from the tank farm dock to the manifold building;
∙ installing wells and taking water and soil samples from various locations to try to characterize contamination;
∙ excavating and treating contaminated soil associated with Tank 100, the manifold building downhill of Tank 107 and the former utility building in the administration area;
∙ performing three treatability studies, including the air-sparge system, a high-vacuum extraction system of limited effectiveness, and a system that injected oxygen-releasing compounds at Tank 104 and near Tank 100.