Members of the Resident Advisory Board met with officials at Pensacola Naval Air Station Tuesday to discuss the cleanup and containment of pollutants in the soil and groundwater of the more than 170-year-old base.
In the late 1980s, several areas at the base were identified as environmental hazards due to past industrial activities, such as pesticide mixing and hazardous waste storage.
In the years since, the Department of Defence has spent millions of dollars to clean up the sites and prevent the spread of pollutants into surrounding areas.
The Resident Advisory Board is a group of community members invited by Pensacola NAS to provide input and participate in the planning and execution of cleanup projects.
Tuesday night, Resident Advisory Board co-chariman Greg Campbell said all but one of the contaminated sites on Pensacola NAS have been effectively treated and contained.
The remaining “nagging problem,” Campbell said, is an 85-acre landfill located on the north side of the base. Iron from the landfill has seeped into the groundwater and is not being effectively contained by current measures, he said.
The iron does not pose an immediate health risk because groundwater in the area is not used for human consumption —Pensacola NAS gets its water from Corry Station three miles away —but community members are worried that it may eventually run off into nearby Bayou Grande.
“We keep looking at different options, but so far none of them seem to be working,” Campbell said.
Currently, the base has installed an “interceptor trench” to separate iron from groundwater and pump it from the ground to be disposed of. But so far, the trench has been ineffective.
“The interceptor trench doesn’t seem to be working,” Campbell said. “(The area) continues to be a problem and we have to come up with a cost-effective way to limit exposure.”
Pensacola NAS currently spends about $3 million a year on environmental cleanup, and Campbell said they are exploring new methods of containing the iron pollution.
RAB board member Jesse Rigby, an attorney who lives near Perdido Bay, said that despite the lingering problems at the landfill, he was happy with the cleanup effort’s success in other, more toxic, locations.
“I think the troublesome stuff that is out there was found early on and dealt with early on,” Rigby said.
