Original Date: 09/15/1997
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

Tooele Army Depot (TEAD) was realigned under the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) 93 review. This was a realignment of the maintenance mission of the Depot and not a total closure. Two parcels of the Depot were excess the industrial area and the administration area. These parcels contain more than 200 buildings and facilities. A BRAC Clean Up Team (BCT) was established at TEAD in April 1994. The mission of the team involved compliance with environmental activities during closure of the parcels, environmental restoration and corrective actions, environmental assessments and impact statements, and real estate support activities and baseline surveys to support reuse. A total of 57 sites at TEAD were investigated for environmental restoration requirements or were already undergoing remediation.

A key to the success and effectiveness was the strong partnership that developed between the Army and regulatory members of the BCT. Typical BCTs have three representative members one from the Installation, one from the state, and one from the EPA. The TEAD BCT had six members one Installation representative, three state representatives, and two EPA representatives. An excellent working relationship was established among the members which resulted in trust and confidence enabling coordination, timely concurrence on actions, and the ability to make changes in the field when needed. The partnership facilitated fast track clean up for early reuse of excess property. One example of this was the clean up of 25 solid waste management sites, 16 of which were identified prior to the BRAC decision and nine of which were identified after. The BCT members worked together to modify the process by combining phased activities, identifying requirements in the field, and minimizing the preparation of sampling plans and reports. This eliminated one year from the project and put all the sites on the same time line. The willingness of the regulatory agencies to provide technical assistance rather than pure oversight has proven to be extremely valuable as technical resources at the Depot have been lost due to downsizing.

An excellent innovation of the BCT was the development of an Environmental Baseline Database (EBD). The EBD was developed by an independent contractor specifically for TEAD. It provides extensive background data and site histories including facility descriptions, historical use of facilities, solid waste management units, hazardous waste, hazardous materials, radiologic substances, ground water, asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls, lead-based paint, air emissions, radon, ordnance and explosive waste, storage tanks, and spills and releases. This information is needed for leasing and transferring buildings and facilities to the local reuse authorities. The EBD provides rapid access to detailed information about each site which greatly speeds up the process and meets the needs of regulators, facility managers, and local reuse authorities.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.