Justine E. Dishart

The Fort Irwin Bioremediation Landfarm is permitted to treat soils contaminated with petroleum, oils and lubricants that come from spills that occur during training exercises and from sediment removal at wash racks.

Fort Irwin

Sustainability in Hazardous Waste

In 2003, Fort Irwin had an ever-growing volume of hazardous waste and high costs associated with its disposal. Additionally, there was a lack of funding to implement pollution prevention (P2) projects that would reduce that volume. To develop a sustainable solution, Fort Irwin implemented a performance based contract (PBC) instead of a requirements-driven contract with stringent controls. In doing so, Fort Irwin reduced its hazardous waste disposal volume, both state and federal, by 81%.

The five year goal of the PBC was to decrease Fort Irwin’s hazardous waste shipout volume from 700,000 pounds to 90,000 pounds. Over the span of five years, the contractor reduced the volume to 130,000 pounds, or by 39%. Additionally, 56% of items that normally required off-site shipment were instead sent to a recycling facility. This generated revenue for the Qualified Recycling Program.

Fort Irwin also built in an incentive program that was tied to meeting benchmarks in pursuit of these goals. The incentive is an award of $25,000 every six months. The contractor awards this incentive money to its employees by giving everyone some portion based on the hours they worked and the rest based on innovative ideas that the employees come up with to reduce hazardous waste. In this fashion, Fort Irwin gained a “bottom-up” enthusiastic buy-in for pursuit of its program goals. The employees share their enthusiasm with the customers, who also benefit from reduced disposal costs and increased revenue.

• Mission Incentive-based programs for contractors encourage enthusiastic support and as such enhance mission readiness.
• Community Provides an incentive to the community to get involved in reducing the upward volume and cost trends of waste disposal. Encourage the recycling of oil and other solid waste products.
• Environment Creates an effective pollution prevention mindset and reduces the amount of hazardous waste.

Over the five-year period ending on CY08, the program

• Decreased offsite disposal of oil/water separator waste 100% by instituting on-site bioremediation, drastically improved the water/soil/sediment contamination issues, and saved on disposal costs.
• Increased on-site recycling rate for all items brought to the hazardous waste yard for disposition to 95%. This decreased volume and decreased disposal costs.
• Combined many previously disjointed and separately contracted activities under one program, and reduced contract and government labor costs by $800,000.

Directorate of Public Works, National Training Center and Fort Irwin Phone: 760-380-3743