RSSProsser digs deep for airport cleanup
Yakima Herald-Republic
ROSS COURTNEY/Yakima Herald-Republic Wade Youngs, a technician with Central Environmental Construction, sprays an oxidizing compound into the ground water of an excavation at the Prosser airport. Clean-up crews are removing thousands of tons of soil that was contaminated decades ago by a a leaky fuel tank.
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PROSSER -- Environmental crews are replacing thousands of tons of fuel-contaminated dirt at the Prosser airport.
Workers are hauling away about 9,800 tons of soil that were contaminated by airplane fuel, perhaps decades ago, near the east end of the airstrip, said John Haakenson, airport manager for the Port of Benton.
The $500,000 cleanup has not disrupted planes using the runway or neighboring businesses that lease airport property, Haakenson said.
Crews from White Shield Inc., a Pasco-based environmental construction firm, will replace the dirt with clean soil combined with a petroleum oxidizing chemical. They will take the contaminated dirt to the Roosevelt Regional Landfill in Klickitat County.
The problem area runs 5 to 20 feet deep and looks like an L-shaped pit about the size of two swimming pools. It sits next to a building that was once used to store crop dusters and the chemicals used to spray fields.
About 20 yards from the pit, the excavated soil is piled in mounds the size of football fields visible from Wine Country Road to the east.
"This is a good-sized cleanup," said David Polivka, the environmental services manager at White Shield.
Pictures of the excavation show veins of petroleum so thick they look black.
"It looks like asphalt," Polivka said.
The ground under the hangar is also contaminated. White Shield workers will inject the oxidizing compound into that soil.
The petroleum has contaminated ground water but only in the areas within a few dozen feet of the building, Polivka said. Because all nearby residents are hooked to city water pipes, Polivka said there's no health risk to the community.
The port uses one well on the property for irrigation but it stretches at least 100 feet deep, well below the layer of basalt at the bottom of the excavation, Polivka said.
He expects the clean-up to take another month.
Port workers discovered the contamination last year after they tested the soil around the hangar, Haakenson said. The soil was laced with traces of DDT, a pesticide banned in the 1960s.
"There was a lot of things done back in the '40s, '50s and '60s that you're no longer allowed to do," Haakenson said.
The port owns all the land at the airport but purchased the building in 2006 to use for maintenance.
Haakenson is researching the history of the spot but believes the underground tank dates to the 1970s or 1980s.
The state Department of Ecology is overseeing the work, but the Port of Benton initiated the clean-up, said Joye Redfield-Wilder, an Ecology spokeswoman.
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