Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Edwards AFB Unveils Decontamination Plant : Environment: The $275,000 facility will be used to scour equipment. It is part of an overall cleanup that could cost more than $500 million.

Trying to show that they have learned from past mistakes, Air Force officials here Wednesday unveiled a new decontamination facility that will aid in an environmental cleanup of the massive base expected to cost more than $500 million.

The new $275,000 facility will clean equipment to be used in upcoming tests to identify potential contaminated sites at the base’s 65-square-mile Phillips Laboratory, where pioneering rocket testing has been conducted since 1952, officials said.

“We had a different vision of the environment in the 1950s,” said Dean Dunn, cleanup program manager at Phillips Laboratory. The laboratory is just one of 10 areas the 470-square-mile base has been divided into for purposes of pursuing the cleanup.

Phillips officials have already identified two confirmed sites and 66 sites of possible contamination in their area. The toxic substances they expect to find include hydrazine, a type of rocket fuel, solvents used to clean equipment, and heavy metals.

The new decontamination facility will be used to wash equipment that will be used over the next several months to conduct testing at the 66 sites to confirm and determine the extent of the problem. Otherwise, the equipment as it is moved could spread contaminated material elsewhere.

John Avolio Jr., director of environmental management for the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards, said more than $100 million has already been spent at the base to research and identify environmental problems. And he said the total bill into the 21st Century is expected to exceed $500 million.

The cleanup efforts at Phillips are being conducted under a $4-million contract awarded to the Earth Technology Corp., a Long Beach-based environmental firm that will conduct the upcoming testing and operate the laboratory’s decontamination facility.

Trucks, drilling equipment and other devices will be brought to the facility each time they are finished at a site, to get a high-pressure wash on a sealed concrete pad. The water will then be collected and cleansed on site. Contaminated soil will be stored in sealed 55-gallons drums there.

Avolio said lax environmental practices at Edwards, located on the Los Angeles-Kern county border north of Lancaster, continued until 1990 when the base was placed on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “national priorities list” for cleanup work.

That list is supposed to help ensure cleanup funding. But Avolio said Edwards may struggle to get enough money for its needs because federal officials have given higher priority to the many military bases that are being closed due to budget cuts.