Paying for cleanup

The base began cleanup in 1990, and the work continues. The contaminants include trichloroethylene, also known as trichloroethene, or TCE, which is "probably carcinogenic to humans," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Other chemicals such as carbon tetrachloride and chloroform, both believed to cause cancer, have also been found in the water in and around the base. Carbon tetrachloride is a former refrigerant, aerosol propellant and solvent and has been banned from all but a few industrial applications. Chloroform can be formed when carbon tetrachloride breaks down in the environment.

Congress is mandated to fund the cleanup because Hill Air Force Base is a government installation, said Sandra Bourgeois, remedial project manager with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"The government is liable, and they have owned up to its liability," Bourgeois said.

When Congress reauthorized the Superfund program in the late 1980s it set up a special account for the Department of Defense, said Robert Steites, EPA Region 8 team leader over federal facilities. The department pays into that account, which funds the cleanup of contaminated military sites.

Money for work on the Hill cleanup is coming from the Air Force Environmental Restoration Program, by way of the Defense Department's account. In other words, you, the taxpayer, are funding the cleanup.

Removing contaminants

At Hill, the 16 contaminated groundwater plumes have been grouped into 12 of what the Air Force calls operable units. Most of the plumes are about 60 feet below the surface, but in some places, including Roy, the contamination is only a few feet beneath the ground.

Hill is now requesting that Roy residents comment on a proposed plan to speed up efforts on a plume of groundwater that stretches from the base's west fence to 2950 West in Roy — about 1.6 miles. It's the area known as Operable Unit 12, and by early 2007, it will be the ninth unit to have a certified plan of action.

The plan has been tentatively agreed to by the Environmental Protection Agency and Utah Department of Environmental Quality. It would add four extraction wells to the three already in place near the base's west fence.

The three wells, which are designed to intercept contaminated water before it leaves the base, currently pump 10 million gallons of water a year out of the ground and send it through the sewer for treatment at the North Davis Sewer District. Sewer district manager Kevin Cowan said Hill has the required permits from the district to allow the discharge into the sewer.