Cleaning up the site of an illicit rifle range near 7 Mile Haines Highway became a little more complicated – and probably a lot more expensive – last week when soil removed from the site registered lead contaminant levels so high the material now must be considered “hazardous waste.”
The Bureau of Land Management project, which is being handled by contractor Northwind, Inc., was initially budgeted to cost $366,000. That price will almost certainly increase now, as disposing of hazardous waste is more expensive than disposing of material with less contamination.
“The contamination levels are high enough that (the Environmental Protection Agency) is requiring us to handle the soil as hazardous waste, and that drives the cost up,” said Dennis Teitzel, a BLM field manager based in Glennallen.
Disposing of hazardous waste costs almost double the amount of disposing of less contaminated soil, said Anne Marie Palmieri, an environmental specialist with the Department of Environmental Conservation who is overseeing the cleanup.
So far, the leachate from three containers of soil have come back testing positive as hazardous waste. Leachate is the water run through the contaminated soil that is subsequently tested to determine the level of contamination.
Each container holds about 16 to 18 cubic yards of soil, said Marnie Graham, a BLM public affairs specialist.
In addition to the three containers that have tested positive, there are still 17 containers full of soil waiting to be tested, Palmieri said.
“If the 17 come back as hazardous waste, then their budget is blown,” she said.
Teitzel did not want to estimate how much the project cost would go up due to the discovery, as BLM doesn’t know how much more of the soil will register similar contamination levels.
“I don’t want to give an answer because until we do some more research and do some more testing, we aren’t going to know what that number is,” he said. “We are exploring how we are going to cover those added costs.”
The project will still continue, regardless of the expense, he said. “Other than increasing the cost, it doesn’t affect the project. It’s still going to move forward,” he said.
The contamination is the result of years of using the 7 Mile property as a makeshift rifle range and dumping ground for car batteries, automobiles and other junk.
Palmieri said the hazardous waste did not turn up in initial tests of the soil because BLM did not take the samples from the backstop area, where most of the spent rounds and other junk had been sitting for decades.
When a container tests positive for hazardous waste, the agency dealing with the waste has 90 days to properly dispose of it, she said. “If they are not going to meet that 90-day requirement, then they will have to have that conversation with EPA and see if they can get special dispensation from EPA to not make that window.”
Teitzel said the development just highlights how expenditures of public money can be avoided if the public is more conscious of the consequences of its actions.
“It’s just one more reason for the public to be aware of the impacts of what they do,” Teitzel said, “so in the future projects like these are minimized and we aren’t spending resources dealing with things that are preventable.”
The BLM started the clean-up process last month as a two-prong effort to protect public safety and enable the agency to transfer a lot at 7 Mile to the State of Alaska. Teitzel said as much as 540 cubic yards of material will be removed.