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Indian Island Gets EPA Clean Bill; Area is First Navy Site Off Superfund List

Posted on: Monday, 25 July 2005, 18:00 CDT

INDIAN ISLAND (AP) After more than 10 years on the federal Superfund list of the nation's most contaminated sites, Naval Magazine Indian Island has received a clean bill of health.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced removal of the island near Port Townsend from the list of tainted sites, meaning the EPA and the state Department of Ecology consider the site of no significant threat to public health or the environment.

It's the first complete Navy installation to be removed from the Superfund list.

"I think that the Navy is to be congratulated here," said Dan Opalski, director of environmental cleanup for the EPA's Pacific Northwest region, who joined representatives from the Navy, the state and the area at a celebration ceremony earlier this month.

Naval Magazine Indian Island is the site of the Pacific Fleet's largest munitions pier. It serves as a major ordnance storage and handling center.

The installation was placed on the list in 1994.

Opalski, who said he'd worked on Superfund sites involving everything from "mom-and-pop businesses to Fortune 500 companies," praised the Navy for its cooperative approach to assessing, cleaning and monitoring the island.

The Navy shaved years off projections for cleaning up one of 19 contaminated sites on the 7-square-mile island by combining underwater training with a search for munitions near a demolished pier, he said.

"As a result, we're here today when we wouldn't have been otherwise," Opalski said.

Officials involved with the project feared the site could take until 2010 to investigate, he said, or that it could "turn into another Jackson Park," a Superfund site in Bremerton where munitions were found on the land, the beach and under water.

The Navy has used the site since the 1940s, and contamination included PCBs, heavy metals and petroleum products. Dumping toxic chemicals and waste indiscriminately was accepted behavior until the past few decades, noted Capt. Jonathan Kurtz, the base's commanding officer.

"Those actions really stand in stark contrast to the way we behave now," he said.

Rear Adm. Len Hering, commander of Navy Region Northwest, said the successful cleanup underscores the importance and feasibility of "understanding the sensitivities of the environment that surrounds you."

"This country is engaged in a war, but we're still doing other things," he said. "Complying with environmental regulations and conducting operations are not mutually exclusive."

Source: Columbian

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