More bullets: Cost of cleanup at Camp Bonneville keeps rising

Clark County’s ongoing efforts to rid Camp Bonneville of ammo and munitions from 85 years of use as a military training camp has a theme: There’s always more out there than expected.

Take, for example, the latest in cleanup efforts at the 3,840-acre site. The county council on Tuesday voted to accept an additional $1.76 million from the U.S. Army to sift through the soil at the camp’s small arms ranges to remove debris. That raises the overall budget to clean munitions and hazardous material from the site from about $21.52 million to $23.28 million — all of it funded by the Army, not Clark County.

That’s unlikely to be the end of it.

“You’re going to keep seeing increases until we finish this,” Clark County engineer Jerry Barnett said.

And it’s no wonder the price keeps going up. Crews from contractor Weston Solutions Inc. have unearthed “barrels full” of ammo — primarily .22, .30 and .45 caliber — at the 21 small arms ranges at the decommissioned camp about 6 miles north of Camas, munitions safety adviser Greg Johnson said while driving through the property. So far, crews have sifted through 19 ranges with two left to go.

“Literally millions of rounds were fired,” Johnson said.

Crews are digging up heaps of dirt at the ranges and running them through an industrial sifter, separating the soil from bullets, casings and a fair amount of junk. Bullets have been found as deep as 4 feet into the soil, Johnson said.

Johnson, standing over dozens of orange 5-gallon buckets, points out a World War I-era Stokes mortar, a handful of bullets and a bucket full of beer cans.

“There’s always a chance an unexploded munition could be here,” he said.

Clark County’s goal since taking the property over from the Army in 2011 has been to clean out the land, then convert it into a park. Crews have nearly completed Phase 1 of the project, covering the central valley floor along LaCamas Valley Creek. They’re also more than halfway through Phase 2, which includes the various small ammo ranges. There are two more phases to go, including cleanup and destruction of large munition in the Central Impact Target Area, a more than 500-acre swath of land used for target practice with large munition. That area, Johnson said, will always be closed off to the public.

Crews have estimated the cleanup could be completed in 2019, but it’s always up in the air.

“That could be close,” Johnson said. “It depends on what we find.”