Alabama base cleanup quite a different scene

Two sprawling forts, 2,000 miles apart. One closed in 1994, the other five years later. But the second shuttered Army base, Fort McClellan in Anniston, Ala., seems to be light years ahead of the first, Fort Ord, in the speed of its cleanup.

Among the differences, according to people directly involved in both redevelopment efforts, is that the Alabamans chose to essentially go it alone. They coaxed a pot of money, $48.5 million, away from the Defense Department and are removing the buried ordnance and other contaminants themselves.

Another key difference is that Fort McClellan escaped the dubious distinction of being declared a federal Superfund site, a designation reserved for the nation's most problematic environmental clean-up challenges. Along with the name comes significantly more red tape, more layers of bureaucracy and monitoring by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Heading the McClellan redevelopment work is the Anniston Joint Powers Authority, which, like the Fort Ord Reuse Authority, is made up of representatives of various local agencies. The smaller Anniston group believes it can finance the removal of ordnance from 4,600 acres there with the money received last year from the federal government.

"We think we can do it cheaper and quicker than they can," said Dan Cleckler, executive director of the Anniston group.

The latest estimate from the federal Base Realignment and Closure office at Fort Ord is that it will take an additional 11 years to clear the Peninsula base of ordnance, at a total cost of $585 million.

Fort McClellan's 22,000 acres are being divided between the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Homeland Security and the joint powers authority, which is receiving a little more than 9,000 acres.

The joint powers authority will be responsible for cleaning the ordnance on the properties being transferred to Anniston and Calhoun County, while the Army will be responsible for the environmental cleanup in the national refuge to be managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

The cleanup of Fort McClellan has generated little public scrutiny although there have been concerns about possible contamination of groundwater in the neighboring town of Weaver. Hunters also were angered when the Mountain Longleaf National Wildlife Refuge at the base was closed to the public because of concerns over leftover munitions, Cleckler said.

While the Fort Ord property has been handed to local jurisdictions at a snail's pace because of similar concerns over buried explosives, the McClellan experience has been much different. The Army quickly transferred 4,500 acres that it and the Alabama Department of Environmental Management agreed were clean.

The joint powers authority quickly sold off existing buildings. Car manufacturer Hunjan now operates a plant there, a hotel opened and more than 300 homes were sold to a real estate company with no controversy.

At Fort Ord, even the transfer of properties that apparently were never exposed to munitions was stalled by the 1998 settlement of an environmental lawsuit.

In Alabama, Cleckler said lack of any organized protests helped win Gov. Bob Riley's support for privatization of the cleanup. Of course, industrialized Anniston is a far different place from coastal Monterey County, where almost any development proposal meets heavy resistance.

Calhoun County residents accept the fact that they live and work among environmental threats, said Monty Clendenin, who is chairman of the Fort McClellan Restoration Advisory Board. The nearby Anniston Army Depot is used by the Army to destroy weapons.

"We are surrounded by these chemical issues. We don't panic much," said Clendenin. "Nobody has children with two heads."

Fort Ord hasn't had a similar citizens advisory group for years. The Fort Ord Restoration Advisory Board was disbanded in 1997 after a consultant concluded it was too acrimonious and a waste of the Army's money.

"It just didn't work here because a small group of people who gained membership had their own agendas and had no motivation to do what the restoration advisory board was supposed to do," said Marina Mayor lla Mettee-McCutchon.

The makeup of the Anniston Joint Powers Authority has also helped simplify the redevelopment process. While there are members from outside Anniston or Calhoun County, only those two jurisdictions are receiving land.

By comparison, five local governmental bodies are receiving Fort Ord land--Monterey County and the cities of Marina, Seaside, Monterey and Del Rey Oaks. Salinas, Sand City, Pacific Grove and Carmel also have representatives on the Fort Ord Reuse Authority board, and they have been vocal in their participation. There also is a long list of non-voting members, who add another dimension.

"I don't know if the United Nations is the right analogy, but it (the reuse authority) is some kind of animal that is unlike what you see in other places and it's clearly cumbersome," said Seaside City Manager Daniel Keen.

Alabama's regulators have not been as rigid as their California counterparts, and that has speeded things along, according to observers, including Monterey City Manager Fred Meurer, a former Army officer who has studied the processes at both bases.

In Meurer's view, the process of cleaning and transferring Fort Ord property has been slowed because the various regulatory agencies in California are exceedingly concerned about avoiding financial liability for any conceivable environmental problems that may arise in future decades. He said the Alabamans are concerned about the environmental issues but are more reasonable in their expectations about how thoroughly the cleanup efforts must be documented.

"This is a community that has been economically impaired by base closure," said Jim Grassiano of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management. "Our environmental office understands that."