[CPEO-MEF] Edwdards Air Force Base (CA) range cleanup

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Edwards to launch cleanup
Cleanup will take years

By Jim Skeen
LA Daily News
February 26, 2006

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - In its early days, Edwards Air Force Base was 
an Army gunnery range. Now, the Air Force is checking to see if there 
any munitions from those days still laying about.

The desert and dry lake beds that are now Edwards became a military base 
in the early 1930s, first as an Army gunnery range and later as a bomber 
training range before evolving in the 1940s into a flight test center.

As part of a Defense Department-wide initiative, Edwards' Environmental 
Management officials are looking for unexploded bombs and shells and 
chemical residue in areas that might have been used as target ranges but 
are now serving other functions.

Those areas include base housing, shopping areas, the former Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory site at North Base, the rocket laboratory and base 
gates.

"We know we'll never bomb those areas again," said Paul Schiff, the Air 
Force project manager. "We'll investigate them and clean them."

The Military Munitions Response Program was created to address the 
cleanup of areas that, as of October 2002, are no longer in use as 
ranges. Nationwide, the Defense Department has identified 293 sites 
covering more than 280,000 acres that will be investigated.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.dailynews.com/search/ci_3547497

See also

Got whey, the grime-fighter?
Milk product helps clean underwater pollution

By Jim Skeen
LA Daily News
February 26, 2006

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - A cheese-making byproduct best known for being 
eaten by Little Miss Muffet is being tested to clean up underground 
contamination left over from long-ago aircraft testing.

Whey - the watery part of milk separated during the cheese-making 
process - is dried and turned into a powder, then mixed at tiny 
concentrations with water and injected underground to be eaten by 
microbes, which begins a reaction that turns the contamination harmless.

"We look at the technology, see if it works and what it costs, before 
deciding on a final solution," said Gary Hatch, spokesman for the base's 
Environmental Management Section.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.dailynews.com/search/ci_3547504

--


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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