Success story: Interagency cooperation on an RI/FS at Fort Lewis, Washington

From February 1992 through May 1993, an RI/FS was conducted at the Fort Lewis Military Reservation near Tacoma, Washington on two suspected contaminated sites, an old municipal landfill (Landfill No. 4) and an abandoned Solvent Refined Coal Pilot Plant (SRCPP), an experimental facility which extracted petroleum products from coal. Intensive planning, cooperation and excellent working relationships between the parties (Army, EPA, Ecology, and Corps of Engineers) enabled completion of the studies in just 16 months, without any adjustment to the project submittal schedule. The flexibility and technical expertise of the consultant (AGI) proved invaluable to solve numerous technically challenges presented by the project. During the investigation, soil and ground water sampling and analysis was undertaken for a wide variety of contaminants. Contaminants discovered at the sites which exceeded regulatory levels were trichloroethylene (TCE) and vinyl chloride in ground water at the landfill and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in soil at the SRCPP