3 MI S OF TOOELE ON HWY 36
Tooele Army Depot (TEAD) has been an active army base since the early 1940s. The 23,732-acre site is located in northeastern Tooele County, Utah, about 35 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. Environmental contamination occurred during the depot's 50-plus years of storing ammunition and repairing equipment. The site was placed on the EPA Superfund National Priorities List (NPL) in October 1990. Superfund is the shorthand term for CERCLA—the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act—passed by Congress in 1980 to address the dangers of abandoned or uncontrolled sites contaminated with hazardous substances. The U.S. Army is the lead-agency to fund assessment and clean up of the site. The Utah Department of Environmental Quality (UDEQ) and EPA cooperatively regulate the clean-up using both RCRA and CERCLA authorities. Remedies have been managed under ten Superfund operable units (OUs) at TEAD, including 57 RCRA solid waste management units (SWMUs). Some of the SWMUs, including all the groundwater, are regulated under a state RCRA permit. OUs 4–10, which contain 17 SWMUs, are being cleaned up under the Superfund program. OUs 1–3, which contain 40 SWMUs, are being addressed under Utah Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) authority. OU15 was added to the Federal Facilities Agreement in 2012 to assess and clean up seven munitions areas, as needed. An eighth area has since been added. Assessment of these areas was performed in 2013. Five areas continue into feasibility study in 2014, two are scheduled for no further action based on sampling data, and one area was assigned to OU16, where a no-action Record of Decision was issued. In March 1993, part of the site (1,663 acres) was placed on the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) list. As a BRAC site, 41 acres were transferred by the Army for private use in 1996. The remaining 1,622 acres of the BRAC parcel were transferred to the redevelopment agency of the city of Tooele in January of 1999. The property was subsequently sold by Tooele City to a commercial developer. Contaminated areas in the 1,663-acre parcel are being cleaned up by the Army. The remaining 22,069 acres of the depot will be retained by the Army for continued storage of conventional ammunition. TEAD is the Department of Defense (DOD) western region hub for the storage, receipt, issue, maintenance, and demilitarization of conventional ammunition. It is also DOD’s Ammunition Peculiar Equipment (APE) center for the design, manufacture, fielding and maintenance of all APE. In 2010 the depot was designated as a Center for Industrial and Technical Excellence (CITE) for APE.
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