BRUNSWICK

Reversing the environmental effects of a military base in one’s backyard for more than 60 years is a long, deliberate process.

But members of the Restoration Advisory Board said the project is moving more quickly than similar base decommissioning projects elsewhere.

During the past 18 months, 2,695 acres — 83 percent of the former base’s area — have been transferred from the U.S. Navy to Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, or MRRA, including more than 900 acres this year alone.

“This has been an incredibly productive year,” said Paul Burgio, co-chairman of the Restoration Advisory Board, which is managing and monitoring remediation of the former Brunswick Naval Air Station.

Burgio said Scores of monitoring wells have been installed and the first series of ground- and surface-water samples have been taken. Pages of existing buildings and sites where buildings used to stand have been surveyed and are being analyzed for solid and liquid contamination.

Other sites where the presence of toxic vapors either have been found, or are likely, have been mapped for study.

One such site is Building 250, part of Hangar 4, where Kestrel Aeroworks is located, adjacent to MRRA headquarters.

The ground water study program is a priority for the Restoration Advisory Board in 2013, Burgio said.

For more than 30 years, the Navy used liquid, oxygen-sapping foam in training and actual fire responses on the base. Foam residue leached into the soil and then into the ground water. Engineers are mapping how the residue has spread so they can mitigate the plume’s effects.

“There can be no conveyance of the facility until the ground water and vapor intrusion assessments can be verified and rectified,” Burgio said.

The process is expected to slow down now as more samples are taken, charted and analyzed for flow tendencies.

The next board meeting tentatively has been scheduled for a Thursday night in March, but will hinge on when the meeting room at Brunswick Station is available.

jtleonard@timesrecord.com

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