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In Our View: Cleaning Up the Camp

Clark County project finally making headway, not headlines

The Columbian
Published: June 24, 2015, 12:00am

One of the most visible parts of Clark County’s heritage is the former Vancouver Barracks, which for many decades served as an Army post and is now largely in transition to a new future. But much less known is an adjunct former Army facility north of Camas that also is in transition.

It was at the 3,840-acre Camp Bonneville that soldiers trained with live-fire exercises between 1909 and 1995. The hilly site is heavily wooded, with a bucolic valley bisected by Lacamas Creek. Though publicly owned, access has been restricted for many years, largely because of the dangers posed by unexploded ordinance lying just beneath the ground.

The Army transferred ownership of the property to Clark County in 2006. Along with the property deed came the promise that the Army would pay to find and remove the unexploded munitions.

Things went wrong almost from the beginning of the cleanup, which was undertaken by a private environmental remediation firm. In 2009, an investigation exposed almost $150,000 in questionable costs incurred by the contractor, including expensive lunches, fine wines and gift baskets for key players. At the same time, the contractor complained that the Army had greatly underestimated the amount of munitions to be cleaned up and woefully under-funded the contract. More than once, the cleanup was halted.

The current contractor, Weston Solutions, took over the job in 2012 and has since been making steady progress. On a recent tour with Columbian staff writer Kaitlin Gillespie, county engineer Jerry Barnett explained crews have implemented a successful plan by dividing the site into 100-foot squares and methodically cleaning each square. They’ve reached the halfway point of Phase 1 of the project, which covers the central valley floor along Lacamas Creek.

As expected, recovery of old ordnance, spent and live, has greatly exceeded the Army’s original projections. At one firing range, workers recovered lead as deep as 4 feet underground. Outside the firing ranges, some old stumps look like they were chosen at random and shot into splinters, Barnett said.

The Army continues to pay for the work, which the county oversees. In May, the federal government gave the county an additional $4.84 million for the second phase of the job, which brings the overall budget to $21.52 million.

The end is nowhere in sight. Current estimates are the cleanup will be completed in about another four years. Once that’s finished, the future of the property is undecided. A regional park with recreational uses, such as camping and hiking, has been mentioned. Old buildings on the site could be repurposed for conferences or retreats. Others have touted devoting a portion of the land to a military cemetery. And, even after the cleanup is complete, some untouched areas are likely to remain off limits for safety reasons.

Neighbors are rightly concerned about increased traffic in their rural area. Foresters point to the need to manage the forest, most of which was replanted after the Yacolt Burn of 1902.

Almost a decade after the county assumed ownership of Camp Bonneville, much work remains to be done, many dollars remain to be spent and many questions remain to be answered. But it’s reassuring that after so many false starts, the trend is in the right direction. A jewel of a property such as Camp Bonneville is an opportunity that Clark County must polish.

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