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The U.S. Navy will take a pause on disbanding the Moffett Field Restoration Advisory Board (RAB), but the environmental watchdog group is still going to be drastically scaled back.
At a Nov. 9 meeting in Mountain View, Navy officials pledged to continue administering the RAB, but they indicated their participation would be reduced. The meetings — previously held every six months — will be reduced to just one per year, and will focus solely on the environmental cleanup at the Navy’s sites, but not adjacent areas that are the responsibility of other agencies such as NASA or the U.S. Army, said Navy spokesman Jim Sullivan.
The Navy maintains responsibility for 23 buildings at Moffett Field, according to officials at the meeting.
“Going forward, we’ll continue to have RAB meetings but they’ll be focused on the Navy’s environmental program,” Sullivan said. “I don’t see us being involved in former areas from a community standpoint.”
Established in 1994, the RAB was created to monitor pollution lingering at Moffett Field after the Navy left as part of the military base closure. That pollution includes many chemicals commonly dumped at old military sites, such as industrial solvents, petroleum, paint and hydraulic fluids.
Over the years, that role has expanded to also include preserving Hangar One and development proposed by Google at the company’s leased section of the airfields.
By most accounts, the Navy’s cleanup program has successfully reduced the contamination in the underground aquifers, although it would be premature to call it mission accomplished. More recently, Navy officials have been signing over responsibility to NASA for their treatment systems used to clean up the pollution.
Nevertheless, concerns over losing the RAB has rattled many people. The group is one of the only public bodies connecting stakeholders at Moffett Field with nearby cities.
RAB chairman Greg Unangst emphasized at the meeting that he wanted to begin discussions soon on creating a new successor organization that could continue the work without being administered by the Navy. He said he would try to schedule a public meeting on this idea in January or February.
Update on hangar projects
Hangar One won’t be restored to its former halcyon days anytime soon. Removing the steel structure’s toxic coating and reskinning it with a new cover is expected to take until 2025, according to representatives from Planetary Ventures, an arm of Google that’s overseeing the project.
However, the Planetary Ventures team did provide an update from a new pilot study on different methods for removing paint containing toxic lead and PCBs from the structure. Starting in March, Google’s contractor CBRE began testing out three different methods for blasting the coating off the steel skeleton, which admittedly is a difficult job. All the work area had to be lined with plastic to ensure no traces of material drifted away, explained Anthony LaMarca, project manager at CBRE.
“Anything that touches the structure has to be captured,” he said. “All these step take a very long time, and there’s a lot of design and effort that goes into it.”
Workers tested out high-pressure blasting of the structure with water, sand and a vaporized abrasive material. Based on the test, the work would likely proceed with either sand or vapor, according to the study.
Getting NASA, the EPA and other agencies to sign off on the cleanup effort is expected to take up about 18 months, LaMarca told the Voice.
In related news, Planetary Ventures is also conducting upgrades and repairs to the smaller hangars Two and Three. Both structures are located on the eastern side of Moffett’s runways and have recently been found to have significant levels of trichloroethylene (TCE) and other contaminants underneath their foundations. These chemicals could be hazardous particularly if their vapors accumulate inside the buildings. Prolonged exposure to TCE can cause cancer and other significant health problems according to the EPA.
Earlier this year, Planetary Ventures proposed installing a subterranean depressurization system under Hangar 2. The company is also working to repair the wooden doors and beams on both hangars, which have deteriorated over the years.
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Unangst has always been a very well informed community commission volunteer, like the Bike-Pedestrian or this one. Too bad he is not now serving on the Council.