Three Daily Press articles on the Fort Monroe closure-costs fiascoJanuary 5 and 6, 2008This fiasco shows yet again that the common-sense solution is to transition Fort Monroe to a Grand Public Place having not only revenue-producing assets but lots of green space. That's green space that doesn't cost a large chunk of a billion taxpayer dollars to clean up -- and green space that, by being left undisturbed, can retain its archeological potential. Here are three Daily Press articles about the fiasco -- one from Jan. 5 and two from Jan. 6:Why have Fort Monroe costs soared?
Members of Congress want to know why the estimate for closing the post has risen 298 percent.
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Daily Press, Jan. 5, 2008
WASHINGTON
Two local members of Congress are pressing the Pentagon to explain why the cost of closing Hampton's Fort Monroe has increased 298 percent.
Reps. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott, D-Newport News, and Thelma Drake, R-Norfolk, have sent a letter to the Defense Department. They are demanding to know why costs have increased to an estimated $288 million and whether the initial estimate considered the expense of environmental cleanup.
The historic post, headquarters for the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, is scheduled to close by 2011, part of a large streamlining approved by Congress that will shutter about 22 major bases nationwide. Cleaning up Monroe is expected to be costly because the moat-encircled fort is thought to be littered with unexploded munitions.
The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, issued a report last month showing the cost of closing the Army fort has risen from a 2005 estimate of $72.4 million to a 2008 budget estimate of $288.1 million. The GAO report didn't make clear why the cost increased.
"How can the current estimated cost increase be explained?" Scott and Drake asked in a letter to Alex Beehler, acting deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment.
The letter said, "In light of the recent reports, we hereby request that you provide us with the cost estimates that were used to justify the closure, the source of those estimates and the amount of projected savings which would justify the closure."
Fort Monroe was cited as one of about 33 base closures or realignments that now face significant cost increases from projections made in 2005, when Congress approved the closure round.
The Defense Department, in response to the GAO, acknowledged the cost increases. It attributed them to everything from inflation to new construction costs, changes in building needs and decisions to enhance training sites or military quality of life. It didn't respond specifically to the case of Monroe. Despite the cost increases, the Pentagon defended the base closure effort, saying it will still save taxpayers $4 billion a year when completed.
A Scott aide said Friday that the congressman hadn't received a response from the Pentagon yet to his letter, which was dated Dec. 20.
Fort Monroe had been targeted for closure for about two decades before Congress approved the move two years ago.
In the past, lawmakers saved the fort by arguing that the high cost of environmental cleanup made closure impractical and a net cost drain on the Pentagon.
In recommending the closure of Monroe, the Defense Department issued a report in 2005 that acknowledged the need for environmental cleanup. But it said it didn't consider that expense to be triggered by a closure of the fort.
"Because the Department has a legal obligation to perform environmental restoration, regardless of whether an installation is closed, realigned or remains open, no cost for environmental remediate (sic) was included in the payback calculation," the report said.
In a report issued a year ago, the GAO reported the cleanup cost of Monroe as $201 million.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Rising fort monroe costs don't include cleanup
Ridding the post of waste could add $200 million to the price tag.
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Daily Press, Jan. 6, 2008
The cost of environmental cleanup at Fort Monroe — an estimated $201 million — was not included in a $288million estimate of how much the Department of Defense will pay to close the post and move Army operations elsewhere.
Not even officials at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, who came up with the latest cleanup estimate, are confident that number is accurate.
But if it is, Fort Monroe will account for more than one third of the Pentagon's budget for environmental cleanup at 25 major military bases nationwide that are scheduled to close by September 2011.
Fort Monroe and the other Army, Navy and Air Force installations will be shut down as part of the controversial Base Closure and Realignment Act that was approved by Congress in 2005.
The BRAC process calls for reorganizing the military and closing bases in order to save money.
A report released last month by the GAO says the process will cost more and save less than Pentagon officials said it would.
According to the GAO, BRAC closing estimates increased from $21 billion to $31 billion, while annual savings dropped from $4.2 billion to $4 billion.
At Fort Monroe, the cost of closing the post and moving operations elsewhere increased from $72.4million to $288million.
But that doesn't include the cost of removing lead paint on buildings, unearthing tens of thousands of rifle shells, cannonballs, or any other environmental hazard.
One of the reasons it will be so expensive to clean up the post is because a galaxy of metal debris in the soil is intermingled with unexploded shells and ammunition.
Fort Monroe's history goes back to the 1600s, though much of the military debris found there dates to the 19th and 20th centuries, when it was a densely populated Army post.
Once it's closed, searching the post for unexploded ordnance will require marking off walking lanes that can be swept with a metal detector. Each time the metal detector gets a "beep," the person walking the lane will drop a "ping flag," said Robert Thomson, a remedial project manager with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Thomson has been an adviser on removing unexploded ordnance from a number of Hampton Roads' military bases. He also served on the Fort Monroe Restoration Advisory Board last year.
Using a metal detector to mark off lanes, which will then be used in a grid pattern to find bombs and shells, is time-consuming, arduous work, Thomson said. A reading on a metal detector can be further complicated by water in the soil, and it doesn't take much digging to hit the water table at Fort Monroe, he said.
Once the lanes are marked, someone will have to analyze the data from the metal detectors to distinguish a rusting shovel from a cannonball.
"That's especially a problem at Fort Monroe, which has such a history," Thomson said."You're going to have horseshoes."The Army has been working through the process of environmental cleanup at Fort Monroe for decades.
Thousands of artillery shells have already been removed. Landfills have been monitored to see if toxins were leeching into the soil, which was not the case. Leaking solvents and various other environmental problems have been dealt with.
The bulk of the work left to do is finding and removing unexploded ordnance,which can be anything from a 50-caliber shell to a Civil War-era cannonball to small-arms ammunition.
The GAO's estimates of the work left to do were based on documents that precede the Pentagon's plans to close Fort Monroe.
According to Army documents, that cost has since dropped to about $191million. Although the GAO estimates the cleanup cost at $201million, that number could go up, said Brian J. Lepore, director of Defense Capabilities and Management within the GAO.
"Our analysis involved an in-depth examination of multiple DOD reports," Lepore wrote in the most recent report. "In the absence of one report that presents all environmental cleanup costs and estimates for each military base, Congress will continue to be presented with a varying array of information."
Handing over the keys?
Fort Monroe is one of 25 major military bases that will close in 2011 as a result of the Base Closure and Realignment Act, passed by Congress in 2005. The land will transfer to the Commonwealth of Virginia once an environmental cleanup is complete to the satisfaction of the governor.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -BRAC pushing Army to speed cleanup of fort
The military and state are "working together" on their plans.
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Daily Press, Jan. 6, 2008
The Army had plans to finish an environmental cleanup at Fort Monroe by 2017, with long-term monitoring through 2047.
Those plans changed in 2005, when Congress passed the Base Closure and Realignment Act, or BRAC, which called for closing 25 major military bases, including Fort Monroe by September 2011. The cleanup is now on a faster schedule, but it's not clear if all the work will be done by the time the post is scheduled to close.
Fort Monroe is laden with old ammunition and artillery shells, some of which date to the 1800s.
If the cleanup isn't finished on time, it won't necessarily delay the former post from being reused or redeveloped. But there are a number of unanswered questions about what has to be cleaned up and when.
The Army is charged with closing posts and transferring land to the respective states those posts are in. However, the state will only accept land that has been cleaned of environmental hazards "to the satisfaction of the governor," according to state documents.
Some local officials have been under the impression that Virginia can only accept the land once the last cannonball is taken out of the sand and the final chips of lead paint are scraped from every windowsill.
That's not the case.
If there's still environmental work to be done by the time the post closes in 2011, some individual parcels on Fort Monroe could be transferred to the state "with appropriate agreements in place," said Steven O. Owens, the state's senior assistant attorney general and counsel to the Fort Monroe Federal Area Development Authority.
The Army's environmental officials are already working with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to determine the extent to which environmental hazards will be removed from Fort Monroe.
"To date, they've been very collaborative. They're obviously working together," said L. Preston Bryant Jr., chairman of the development authority, an 18-member group responsible for planning Fort Monroe's conversion from military use. One of several issues that will have to be resolved is whether the Army should remove unexploded ordnance from the surrounding water, and to what extent that should be done.
Another issue is distinguishing ordnance shot from mounted guns and cannons at Fort Monroe, which would be the Army's responsibility, from other mines, artillery shells and depth charges left by other branches of the military in the Chesapeake Bay.
The Army had an action plan in 2006 that called for excavating soil to remove lead bullets from sediment at the bottom of the bay.
The process would require surveying about 100,000 acres of the bay using a rocket-shaped instrument called a marine magnetometer, along with sonar scanning. The action plan was written before BRAC took effect, and has dates for clean up that extend to 2017.
While the Army's plans have changed to hurry cleanup, it's not clear how much of the water will be cleared of ammunition.
The state Department of Environmental Quality expects to have a draft of an environmental impact statement late this year. A final record of decision stating the extent of cleanup required by the state is due by July 2009.
The parties involved in negotiating the terms of the cleanup include the redevelopment authority, the Army, the state DEQ and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Bryant said.
As of last week, the state DEQ wants the Army to clean up the bay.
"Some work has been done, basically in two stages," said Bill Hayden, public affairs director for the DEQ.
"The first covers conventional contaminants (solvents, PCBs, pesticides, etc.) in soil and in aquatic settings. ... The second stage encompasses nonconventional contaminants such as military munitions, also in soil and aquatic settings. The moat is included in this part of the evaluation, as are Mill Creek and Chesapeake Bay. Fourteen sites have been identified to date. One of these is the impact area in the Chesapeake Bay, which is associated with historic range activities at Fort Monroe."(Home)