MOFFETT LANDFILL CONSOLIDATION

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>]

NAVY PROPOSES MOFFETT LANDFILL CONSOLIDATION

A while back, I posted a message reporting that, late in the process of 
site study, the Navy had discovered that the gas line (nown on facility 
maps) traveling near the surface of one of the Moffett Field Superfund 
landfills was a main gas conduit serving the city of San Francisco. 
This oversight turned out to have a silver lining.

When the Navy dug trenches to find the gas main, if found much less 
refuse than anticipated. Eventually, it lowered its estimate of waste 
from nearly 170,000 cubic yards over five acres to 20,000 cubic yards 
over one acre.

Based upon those findings, the Navy has proposed to change its 
previously plan - a multi-layer cap in place. Instead, it now hopes to 
consolidate the waste with a larger nearby landfill, which will then be 
covered with a multi-layer cap. Any liquid or containerized waste found 
during excavation will be shipped to an appropriate disposal facility.

The new proposal appears to have support both from the public and from 
regulatory agencies. It will reduce the size of the long-term "toxic 
footprint" at Moffett, and it will place the excavated wastes near the 
surface, away from the saturated zone where toxic leaching is more 
likely to occur. Furthermore, consolidation will take less construction 
time (three months as opposed to six), and it will lower costs for 
remediating the smaller landfill from an estimated $1,372,700 to about 
$1,091,700.

Lenny Siegel