Client: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Sacramento Division

Project Duration: July 2000 – July 2005

Project Value:
$65 million

Parsons Scope of Work: Managing investigation and removal operations for sites containing known or suspected munitions and explosives of concern (MEC).

Fort Ord is a former Army training facility located adjacent to Monterey Bay in Northern California. The site was a training installation from 1917–1994 that prepared Army infantry, cavalry, and field artillery units for WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Desert Storm. Training exercises included the firing of a variety of military munitions.

Fort Ord is located in Monterey, California, appoximately 113 miles south of San Francisco.

MEC being readied for demolition.

In 1991, Fort Ord was included on the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) list, and it was closed in 1994. Today, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is conducting one of the nation’s largest unexploded ordnance cleanup tasks on this 43-square-mile site.

Munitions and explosives of concern are being removed from the Fort Ord site to renovate the property for much needed new housing and recreation areas. Since 2000, Parsons has managed the ordnance cleanup, organized and digitized tens of thousands of historic field removal documents, and identified and removed MEC.

Field geophysical crew surveying grid using 858 array.

During a typical cleanup process, analog devices scan every inch of soil but cannot detect nonferrous materials or create a land map. Newer digital instruments detect all metals and record permanent georeferences of site conditions. For the most contaminated areas, we have integrated the two methods to deliver the highest quality cleanup solution.

Parsons developed a geographic information system (GIS) with automated functions creating easy-to-update, easy-to-understand illustrations showing project status, forecasts, and comparisons of actual to forecast production. Data collected in the field is recorded electronically using PDAs and a Parsons-designed menu system. We also constructed a towed array cart system that has tripled the quantity of digital geophysical survey data that can be collected at one time.

To date, Parsons has worked 660,000 hours to remove and recycle over 2 million pounds of recovered metal, while incurring absolutely no lost-time accidents.

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