Plan Aims to Expedite Air Base Cleanup : Environment: State and federal officials agree to tackle 35 toxic waste sites at Edwards.

State and federal officials have reached agreement on a plan to expedite toxic waste cleanup at Edwards Air Force Base that may take decades to complete and cost nearly $83 million.

The Air Force has already spent 10 years and an estimated $21 million on cleanup efforts at the base, located about 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles. But that effort has thus far cleaned up only one of 36 contaminated areas, a spokesman said.

The new agreement between the Air Force, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and state health and water officials will govern most of the actual soil and ground water cleanup, a task officials expect to cost another $62 million and take 30 years or more.

“It’s not an easy process. It requires a great deal of investigation. It’s a long, tedious, technological problem,” said Capt. Daniel Bowholtz, head of the base’s environmental planning and compliance branch. Edwards is the second-largest Air Force base in the continental United States.

The agreement, finalized Thursday night when it was approved at a California Regional Water Quality Control Board meeting in Barstow, followed the base’s addition in late August to the EPA’s National Priorities List.

Edwards officials said the contamination stems from years of leaking underground tanks, jet fuel spills, landfill and industrial activities. They said the contamination poses no immediate health danger either on or off the base but could pose a long-term threat to drinking water.

Bowholtz said the base’s placement on the National Priorities List and the ensuing agreement should help make the base eligible for more cleanup funding. He said base officials have earmarked $10 million for cleanup work in the coming fiscal year.

The 36 identified contamination sites at Edwards are divided into 20 geographic areas of the base, which covers about 300,000 acres in the Mojave Desert near the border of Kern and Los Angeles counties. Most are in the main base area or near the base’s astronautics lab.

EPA documents say “large amounts of fuel” have been spilled at the Main and South base areas of Edwards over the years, and cite “poor disposal practices” that allowed solvents to seep into the ground. They also cite an abandoned landfill containing pesticides and heavy metals.

EPA documents also say a variety of solvents--trichloroethylene, methylene chloride and others--are present in the ground water under the base. But Bowholtz said the pollution is in an upper-level aquifer that is separate from the deeper aquifer that supplies the base’s water.

Bowholtz also said there is some concern that contamination from the abandoned landfill could migrate to the base’s main water well about three miles away. But he said base officials believe the migration would occur very slowly, if at all.

The agreement gives state and federal agencies the power to oversee and advise on the cleanup and provides for the resolution of disputes among the agencies. It also mandates a community relations program to inform the public of developments.

Bowholtz said the Air Force developed its latest cost estimate for the cleanup, $82.8 million, in the last several months. Officials said there is no time-frame for completion of the work because investigative work remains unfinished.

During that period, Edwards will have to regularly seek funding from a special federal account, the Defense Environmental Restoration Account, which is similar to the Superfund program that the EPA uses to clean up non-federal hazardous waste sites.