SAN ANTONIO - The challenges of large groundwater clean-up projects at World War II era munitions plants are numerous.
First, they take time, often decades. The knowledge about the chemicals found at the sites is frequently updated over time, as the science and understanding of these contaminants and how they move underground in groundwater plumes, is much more advanced than when cleanup began.
In addition, the data accumulated on the projects of this size and scope is voluminous; contains acronyms and terms not always understood by everyone; and this information is usually available only in large publications that are difficult, if not impossible, for non-scientists to understand. Further, the information is stored and archived on CDs at public libraries, and in some cases not easily accessible.
Taken together, these difficulties can lead to feelings of frustration by people in surrounding communities as the work on contamination cleanup can seem opaque, ineffective, slow, and reliant on limited resources for a major task.
At the Badger Army Ammunition Plant – opened in 1942 to produce smokeless gunpowder and solid rocket propellants for WWII – the cleanup projects and water quality efforts have been ongoing since 1980, shortly after the plant ceased operations in 1975. The team managing this cleanup for the U.S. Army Environmental Command has taken steps to deal with the challenges of explaining the progress made.
The Army team brought in experts from the U.S. Geological Survey to review past data and reporting and to improve data collection going forward. In addition, the USGS team created a web-based information-sharing program the Army’s cleanup team hopes will increase transparency, improve awareness of the work that has been done and what is left to do, and increase public understanding of the remediation efforts.
“At the USGS we brought an objective third party perspective to review the information,” said Matthew G. Pajerowski, supervisory hydrologist from the Studies Section at the USGS. “Our primary assignment was to review all the data, do our own analysis and reinterpret it. The USGS has a long history and expertise characterizing groundwater quality and understands the importance of communicating scientific results clearly and making information readily accessible.”
Pajerowski said the USGS data review and analysis– which began in 2016 and used data collected by the Army from 2000 to 2018 -- found that the previous assessments of where the groundwater plumes were, and how they were moving, were substantiated. He said the USGS also identified areas where additional monitoring wells would increase confidence in future assessments of plume extent.
Soil and groundwater at the plant contained several contaminants as a result of production and waste disposal practices, particularly at landfills, that occurred during plant operations. Monitoring wells both within the closed plant boundaries and offsite have been used to assess groundwater contamination and its movement.
Pajerowski said that USGS staff members Marina Metes and Jaymes Swain developed and have implemented the story map approach to sharing information about the site. A story map is a web-based, interactive site that shares maps, reports, background information and the latest information available with the public.
Community member Chris Hanson, of the Badger Restoration Advisory Board who has a background in hydrology, said easier access to information and easier-to-understand data were challenges that needed to be addressed to improve the outreach for the project. The purpose of the RAB is to serve as an avenue for communication between the military installation, state and federal officials, and the community about the environmental restoration activities at the plant.
“Quite honestly when you talk to most people in the public, (the cleanup project) is sort of this big black box, it’s this amorphous thing,” Hanson said. “Many people think ‘I know there’s contamination, but I don’t know what is where and when.’ We think the story map approach can help improve on that. The goal of this is to help provide a comfort level to the average person, giving them the data in a way that is user-friendly, and gives them the information they need.”
RAB co-chair and area resident Michele Hopp, who first became acquainted with the cleanup project as a local newspaper reporter covering the site and has served on the RAB since the early 2000s, called the story map an important step in improving public interaction.
“It is certainly not going to hurt. There’s a longstanding mistrust in the community. The more transparency the cleanup team can show, the better,” she said. “If people can see where the contamination is, the story map will be a helpful tool to help people gather information. The cleanup team is moving in the right direction, not making us go to a public library to check out a cd to get the water data – that’s a good step. However, they need to keep the story map going, keep it current, and it will help improve with transparency, which is a good thing.”
Hanson agreed, adding: “There are several hundred volumes of information, the average person neither has the time or willingness or ability to go through all that, or the background to understand much of it.”
Hanson also said that for community members, the remediation work is largely invisible to them, so they either think nothing is happening at the stie, or there’s not an ongoing issue – two issues he said better information presentation can help address.
“For the average person, it is out-of-sight and out-of-mind when they don’t see anything happening at the site, so they might think nothing is going on. On the other hand, they might assume there’s no longer an issue.”
Matt Dayoc, head of the Midwest and Central America Division at USAEC, said the story map can also provide a more-public-facing chronology of the work that’s been done.
“I think it’s a great tool for the public. Badger’s been in the cleanup process for a number of years, so you kind of lose a sense of where you’re going and where you’ve been,” he said. “The story map shows pictorially, right alongside the data reports, what has been happening. It shows that there have been changes in the concentrations (of contaminants) in the groundwater, and changes in the size of the groundwater plumes. It helps people to see there has been a reduction of the amount of contaminant in the water. The plumes tend to be shrinking, although there remains potential for some of them to continue to migrate, and that’s something we monitor very closely.”
Hopp added that close monitoring of migration of the plumes toward the Wisconsin River, and properties in that area, remains a concern that both the RAB and the cleanup team are closely watching. She said the story map could be a useful tool monitoring this work going forward.
The story map site is available at https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/84f9a90e1754494f8042125a058c5bb5
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