Weapons Station to Clean Water Faster and Cheaper

SEAL BEACH, Calif. — A cutting-edge treatment of contaminated groundwater at Naval Weapons
Station Seal Beach will save the Navy more than $3 million and cut cleanup time by two-thirds.

In the largest use of bio-augmentation to date, a bacteria culture will be used to treat chlorinated solvent contaminants in the groundwater beneath the base in an area about two-thirds of a mile long, half of a mile
wide and 180 feet deep.

“We are injecting emulsified vegetable oil (EVO) and a bacteria culture called KB-1 that is capable of degrading the solvents in the ground,” said Pei-Fen Tamashiro, installation restoration program manager at station.

Researchers believe that the water was contaminated in the 1960s when the facility was used to manufacture the second stage rocket of the Saturn V launch vehicle for the Apollo space program. Although the contaminated plume is not used as a drinking water source, if it is not treated it could eventually contaminate other aquifers in the area.

Tamashiro will supervise the injection of EVO and KB-1 in more than 200 injection wells around the contaminated area to form six bio-barriers. From there, the contaminated water will flow through the barriers encountering the microbes that will treat the solvents.

If the Navy were not to employ this program, the water would have to be pumped to and treated on the surface.  Doing so takes longer to treat the site and would cost the Navy more money. With the bioremediation process the cleanup will take 15 years, instead of the 50-plus years it would take using the traditional pump-and-treat method.

The microbes used at the Seal Beach site are a natural culture the area lacks.

For more news from Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, visit  http://www.navy.mil/local/sealbeach