Base officials await DEC tests on jet-fuel cleanup on state land before continuing site remediation, monitoring
An Eielson Air Force Base contractor has excavated about a thousand tons of soil from a site in Salcha contaminated by more than 700 gallons of jet fuel. The JP-8 leaked from two fuel tanks that hit the ground there on May 28th after the pilot of an F-16 jettisoned them, because of a problem aboard the fighter jet.
“Both excavations are complete, for tank one and tank two, and were wrapped up on the 9th of September,” said Lt. Col. Brendan Dorsey-Spitz. He’s the commander of Eielson’s 354th Civil Engineering Squadron. The unit is overseeing cleanup of an approximately 2,000-square foot area. He says workers with Fairbanks-based Republic Services removed 572 cubic yards of soil from the site, along with another 10 tons of vegetation and other organic material.
And he says the contractor took precautions to limit the contamination from spreading. “The site is secured and covered up with tarps, so that no additional water or contaminant can be released.”
Dorsey-Spitz said staff with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation have been on-site to oversee the work. DEC also is conducting tests on soil samples from the site to determine whether more work is needed to ensure the cleanup meets state and federal standards.
'We're in a waiting pattern'
“And so what we're doing right now is we're kind of in a waiting pattern,’ he said, “as we wait for the lab results to decide whether further excavation is required.”
He said Wednesday that the contractor will excavate more soil if samples show there’s still contamination around the site. If not, it’ll bring in clean material to fill the pits. “So, throughout this process, they're continuously testing and making sure that they got it all.
Dorsey-Spitz said it took a while for Eielson to get started on the cleanup, because of end-of-fiscal-year funding issues and planning and on-site testing, and also getting authorization for work to be done off the base. The tanks fell on state Mental Health Trust Land on May 28th in an area about a mile-and-a-half west of Eielson.
He said the soil will be thermally remediated at the Moose Creek Treatment Facility, a subcontractor working with Republic Services, an environmental remediation firm.
“They sort the stockpile soil and debris, and they run through both a primary method and a secondary method where the chemicals are thermally removed and then destroyed in the secondary unit.”
Dorsey-Spitz added that he appreciates the DEC’s help in dealing with the cleanup.
“They're truly a great partner for the base, and we're certainly happy that they're teammates of ours to kind of work through this incident.”
Meanwhile, an investigation continues into the cause of the problem that led the F-16 pilot to declare an in-flight emergency. An Eielson official said it likely won’t be completed until the end of the year.
