Re: [CPEO-IRF] New GAO report on closure environmental issues

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

The new GAO report on base closures is a cursory review of the 
environmental cleanup challenges at base realignment and closure sites. 
It says, once again, that costs will go up and that there are many ways 
to convey property. Unfortunately, its bean-counting approach does not 
does not provide the in-depth analysis necessary to understand the 
implications of the 2005 round of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC).

For example, it states that the 102,000 acreage for BRAC 05 "includes 
acreage at three chemical demilitarization bases slated for closure - 
Deseret Chemical Depot, Utah; Newport Chemical Depot, Indiana; and 
Umatilla Chemical Depot, Oregon." But it never explains that those 
properties won't be transferred until they complete their chemical 
weapons disposal missions. Understanding partial or full transfers at 
those three facilities is significant, since those three facilities 
total 46,000 acres, nearly half the total.

GAO also provides data, compiled from the Defense Environmental Program 
Annual Report for 2005, showing that BRAC 05's environmental problems 
are much smaller than those of previous rounds, but I didn't notice any 
emphasis on that point. There are only three major cleanups (over $25 
million cost to complete) on the 05 list, but the top ten from previous 
rounds are all above $75 million.

BRAC 05 TOP THREE

Fort Monroe (VA) $201 million
Deseret Chemical Depot (UT) $178 million
Concord Naval Weapons Station $85 million

It would have been helpful to see a discussion of undetermined munitions 
response requirements at Fort Monroe and a discussion of potential 
chemical warfare recovery and disposal at Deseret.

The discussion of different conveyance methods doesn't address the pros 
and cons of each, but Table 6 is the best compilation of Early Transfers 
that I've seen:

Table 6: Use of Early Transfer Authority at Prior BRAC Round Bases, as 
of July 2006
Installation 	Acres
Fort McClellan, Alabama 	4,692
Naval Shipyard, Mare Island, California 	3,486
Fort Devens, Massachusetts 	2,358
Alabama Ammunition Plant, Alabama 	2,235
Naval Air Station Memphis, Tennessee 	1,863
Naval Air Station Agana, Guam 	1,798
Tooele Army Depot, Utah 	1,621
Naval Activities, Guam 	1,482
Fort Ord, California 	1,401
Fleet Industrial Supply Center, Oakland, California 	676
Naval Shipyard, Charleston, South Carolina 	436
Oakland Army Base, California 	364
Grissom Air Force Base, Indiana 	201
Bayonne Military Ocean Terminal, New Jersey 	192
Griffiss Air Force Base, New York 	179
Mather Air Force Base, California 	165
Wurtsmith Air Force Base, Michigan 	149
Naval Ordnance Station, Louisville, Kentucky 	142
Fitzsimons Army Medical Center, Colorado 	133
Naval Training Center, San Diego, California 	51
Public Works Center, Guam 	25
Lowry Air Force Base, Colorado 	12
Naval Training Center, Orlando, Florida 	9
Total acres 	23,670

Lenny

Lenny Siegel wrote:
> MILITARY BASE CLOSURES
> Opportunities Exist to Improve Environmental Cleanup Cost Reporting and 
> to Expedite Transfer of Unneeded Property
>
> U.S. Government Accountability Office
> January 30, 2006
> GAO-07-166
> To download the entire report, go to
> http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-166
>
> Highlights
>
>
> While expected environmental cleanup costs for unneeded property arising 
> from the 2005 BRAC round are not yet fully known, Department of Defense 
> (DOD) data indicate that about $950 million will be needed to clean up 
> these bases, adding to the estimated $13.2 billion total cleanup cost 
> for the prior rounds. Although DOD's cleanup program has matured 
> compared to prior BRAC rounds, there are still many unknowns and the 
> cleanup estimate for the 2005 round should be considered preliminary. In 
> fact, environmental cleanup costs are likely to increase as more 
> intensive environmental investigations are undertaken, additional 
> hazardous conditions are discovered, and future reuse plans are 
> finalized. Furthermore, Congress does not have full visibility over the 
> total cost of DOD's BRAC cleanup efforts because none of the four 
> reports DOD prepares on various aspects of environmental cleanup present 
> all types of costs-past and future-to complete cleanup at each base. 
> Compiling a complete picture of all costs requires extracting 
> information from multiple reports, as GAO has done to estimate the total 
> cleanup cost for the four prior BRAC rounds. More complete and 
> transparent cost information would assist Congress in conducting its 
> oversight responsibilities for this multibillion dollar effort.
>
> While GAO's analysis shows that DOD continues to make progress in 
> transferring over 502,500 acres of unneeded property from the four prior 
> BRAC rounds-78 percent of the acres have now been transferred compared 
> to 72 percent 2 years ago-over 112,300 acres remain untransferred. 
> Comparatively, a total of about 102,000 acres are potentially 
> transferable as a result of the 2005 BRAC round. Impediments to transfer 
> continue to be related primarily to a variety of interrelated 
> environmental cleanup issues, including limited technology to address 
> unexploded ordnance and prolonged negotiations on compliance with 
> environmental regulations.
>
> Opportunities exist to expedite the cleanup and transfer of unneeded 
> 2005 BRAC properties compared with other BRAC rounds. Congress provided 
> DOD with a wide range of property transfer authorities for prior BRAC 
> rounds. In the past DOD did not use some tools as much as others out of 
> deference to community land reuse plans. For example, low- and no-cost 
> transfer tools accounted for 65 percent of all acres transferred, 
> whereas public and negotiated sales accounted for 5 percent. DOD's March 
> 2006 guidance now encourages the services to make full use of all tools 
> for transferring properties resulting from both the 2005 and prior-year 
> BRAC rounds. The services have processes in place to monitor their 
> progress to clean up and transfer BRAC properties, but they are not 
> required to report periodically to the Office of the Secretary of 
> Defense on their successes and challenges in using various transfer 
> authorities. Collectively, such lessons learned could help others 
> expedite the cleanup and transfer of unneeded properties by maximizing 
> the use of all available tools, thereby accelerating the economic 
> benefits of property reuse to communities while also saving the ongoing 
> caretaker costs being incurred by DOD for unneeded propertie


--


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org


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