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August 3, 2011
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Page 5
CAMP O
BONNEVILLE
Bonneville Conservation and
Restoration Team
BCRRT
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Clark County pursues an agreement with the U.S. Army to cover cleanup costs at Camp Bonneville, east o f Vancouver, in order to make the site a future park.
Military Wasteland
Former base near Vancouver
still not ready for park use
C ari H achmann
T he P ortland O bserver
by
A deadline recently passed
for Clark County and the Army
to reach a funding agreement
that will resume the multi-million
d o lla r c le a n -u p o f C am p
Bonneville, a former military
training base east of Vancouver.
The state has plans to re-use
a portion of the property for a
regional park once clean-up is
complete in many years to come.
However, negotiations with the
Army have stalled due to the
property’s history of ownership
transfers, funding disputes, and
underestimated costs of further
contamination found on the site.
Established in 1909 as a drill
field and rifle range for the
Vancouver Barracks, the 3,840
acre property six miles north of
Camas was used as a military
training camp until the U.S. Army
closed the facility in 1995.
Once closed, the Base Re­
alignment and Closure Team
(BRAC) began a planning pro-
cess for re-use of the property
with oversight from the Depart-
ment of Ecology, Clark County,
the EPA until 2003, and funding
from the Army.
The same year, the Army pro­
In 2006, the Army transferred vided $28.6 million in a fixed-
3,020 acres of the property to price contract under the Envi-
Clark County to finish the job left ronmental Services Cooperative
incomplete.
Agreement, for clean-up. The
For over 85 years, the Army used the Camp
Bonneville east o f Vancouver as a military
training base, and despite millions in federal
funding and years o f clean-up attempts, the site
remains rampant with environmental pollution
and munitions o f explosive concern.
county then hired Bonneville
Conservation, Restoration, and
Renewal and two subcontrac­
tors, to take ownership and clean
the property.
The clean-up effort halted in
2009 after contractors found
more than 700 “munitions of
explosive concern,” a signifi­
cantly greater number than the
Army had reported in earlier
assessm ents.
O ther contam inants found
were unexploded ordinances,
explosive compounds, lead, pe­
troleum products, pesticides,
buried chemical warfare, and
unknown levels of ammonium
perchlorate and RDX leaking
from landfills into the groundwa-
Pieces o f ordnance make up some o f the scrap munitions uncovered from Camp Bonneville.
continued
on page 6