News

Robins aggressive groundwater treatment mediation process moves ahead of schedule

  • Published
  • By Holly L. Biirchfield
  • 78th ABW/PA
Robins is making great strides in cleaning up contaminated water at a number of sites on base and the base's groundwater treatment plant is central to the process.

Fred Hursey, Environmental Programming Branch chief in the 78th Civil Engineer Group's Environmental Management Division, said the treatment plant's pump and treat method is effective, but can also be time-consuming for some contaminants.

"We have 79 solid waste management units or clean-up sites on our hazardous waste permit through the Georgia Environmental Protection Division," he said. "We have a handful of sites where we are doing long term monitoring, and operations and maintenance. Most of the other sites we have already closed, so we have a very mature program."

He said the remaining unclosed sites are the most complex and they take longer to clean up because they are cleaning up solvents and other contaminants.

Mr. Hursey said his people are aggressively seeking ways to improve their clean up process.

"We generate reports annually that go to the state," he said. "We're always evaluating the data we get and looking at new opportunities to use different technologies along with what we're already using to pump and treat to the plant to reduce the overall clean up time."

Philip Manning, an environmental engineer in the 78th CEG, and the Robins Groundwater Treatment Plant project manager, said the base has corrected past practices that led to the groundwater contamination.

Groundwater problems here date back to Robins' beginning, said Nelson Rosa, Earth Tech/Architecture Engineering Consulting Operations manager, a contractor for the 78th CEG.

"The accepted way to dispose of all the chemicals that we used when the planes were overhauled was to put them in drums and in landfills. Over the years, those chemicals leached out into the ground," he said.

Mr. Manning said the base has made changes in its processes to prevent such problems. He said the remedial processing facility is designed to clean up the remaining sites so they can be closed for "no further action" in compliance with the regulations of the Georgia EPD and also of the U.S Environmental Protection Agency.

Mr. Rosa said Robins has gone above and beyond requirements to get groundwater back to productive use in record time.

"When all of this was first started, it was projected that it would take 30 years, and we are really quite ahead of schedule," he said. "We have closed most of our sites and it's through all the work and aggressive focus on cleaning up all the sites that got us this far. I see groundwater mediation finishing up well ahead of schedule."

Mr. Rosa said the plant's small team has made some large gains with its mission.

"The groundwater remediation plant is basically five guys that go out along with engineers from within Robins and Earth Tech and aggressively make strides to optimize the remediation process so the sites will get where they need to be - free of contamination." he said.

Mr. Rosa said the award-winning, state-of-the-art plant has never received a safety violation.

Mr. Manning said as a result of Robins' hard work in shutting down active remedial systems at the landfill, the U.S. EPA has begun the process of delisting our only National Priorities List site, otherwise known as the Super Fund.