The slow conversion of Camp Bonneville from U.S. Army training base to regional park will mark a small milestone Tuesday as Clark County commissioners are expected to approve a settlement agreement with a contractor and two subcontractors.
In 2006, Clark County hired Bonneville Conservation, Restoration and Renewal Team, Michael Baker Jr. Inc and MKM Engineers Inc. to clean up the 3,840-acre property, about six miles north of Camas.
Amid disputes over the cleanup, which proved more extensive than initially thought, work was suspended in September 2009.
The agreement calls for BCRRT and its president, Mike Gage, to leave the site July 15. The county would then lease the property from BCRRT rent-free for a year while it negotiates for a new cleanup funding agreement with the Army, said Jeff Mize, spokesman for the county’s public works department.
Once the county gets an agreement with the Army, Mize said, “The county will then accept permanent ownership of the property, and final payment will be made to BCRRT and subcontractors for the work they have done to date.”
Mize said Tuesday’s agreement will include an immediate $250,000 payment to BCRRT, with an additional $600,000 once the county has a new arrangement with the Army.
Mize said the county will be taking a more active role in directly overseeing the cleanup, rather than deferring to a lead contractor as they did with the fixed-price contract relationship from the Army to the county to BCRRT. Contractors have removed 700 potentially explosive items but the cleanup bogged down late last year after squabbling over funding and cost overruns.
“A lot’s been done, but I think everyone recognizes the job is much bigger than what was envisioned in 2006,” Mize said.
The Washington Department of Ecology, which continues to work closely with the county, has developed a draft cleanup action plan that will define a scope of work for the next phase of the cleanup. Both county and state officials will make public safety the top priority.
If no agreement is reached by July 13, 2011, the contractors would not be released from their 2006 agreements.
Mize said the county has already been contacted by contractors interested in the job.
Either way, the Army will remain financially responsible for cleaning up a training site it used for much of the 20th century.
“The county has two over-arching objectives guiding its Camp Bonneville efforts: making sure the property is adequately cleaned so it can be safely enjoyed by county residents and ensuring the Army pays for the cleanup without shifting costs to local taxpayers,” Mize said.
