[CPEO-MEF] Alameda to discuss clean up of old base

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California
ALAMEDA TIMES-STAR
Alameda to discuss clean up of old base
Golf courses, hotel are expected
By Kristin Bender
September 09, 2003 - 3:26:51 AM PST

ALAMEDA -- The city envisions moneyed golfers putting and driving on two
world-class golf courses at the former U.S. Navy base, but first
officials must pinpoint exactly how to clean up the toxins that long
have polluted the waterfront site.

Tonight city officials, a golf course designer and an environmental
specialist will give the public a rare glimpse of how the city plans to
clean up and reuse the Northwest Territories, where an 18-hole
links-style golf course, a nine-hole executive course and hotel, spa and
conference center are planned to open as early as 2009.

"Clean up of that (area) is the major question mark in the timing of the
golf course project," said Ed Levine, city development project manager.

The city is using a $100,000-grant from the federal Environmental
Protection Agency's Super- fund Redevelopment Initiative Grant to
explore how the site will be cleaned for redevelopment, said base reuse
planner Elizabeth Johnson.

The toxic site in question is a 32-acre area, which includes toxins,
contaminated groundwater and a 14-acre former landfill that either will
be cleaned up or covered, Johnson said. An abandoned airfield, former
ammunition bunkers and a guard tower all need to be torn down.

Among the contaminates are polyclorinated biphenyls, toxins often found
in oil and old lighting fixtures; shells once used in aircraft guns at
the gun test facility, but were later buried; radium paint, which was
used to paint glow-in-the-dark instrument dials on the airplanes; lead;
and a "burn area," officials said.

"There is also a bunch of trash from the operation of the base from
World War II though when the landfill closed in the 1950s," Johnson
said.

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.timesstar.com/Stories/0,1413,125~1486~1620241,00.html

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