Arch to mark engineering marvel
Can an old military site be turned into a tourist attraction?
Many people who have traveled the Alaska Highway are familiar with the beginning of the road in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, and have stopped there to take pictures. But it really isn’t anything to just start the journey. Finishing it is the real chore.
For many years, the city of Delta Junction has sought to increase tourism by marketing its unique location at the end of the Alaska Highway. In Delta Junction, one piece of property, known to locals as the “triangle,” resides at what would be the final mile marker of this 1,422-mile trip.
Unfortunately, Delta Junction doesn’t have full use of the state-owned site because of pre-existing contamination preventing the state from transferring it to the city. From 1954 to 1987, the site was an Army fuel storage and dispensing depot. In 1999, the Army initiated a cleanup project. More than 5,000 cubic yards of contaminated material was removed.
However, budget constraints forced the military to cease its cleanup operations, leaving a few problems that precluded the state’s conveying ownership to the city. With most of the contaminated material removed, the risk to human health was reduced to the point that obtaining more cleanup funding was difficult. Meanwhile, the remaining contamination prevented the community from developing the site to its full economic potential. The triangle is Delta Junction’s most important and longest-standing brownfield site.
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) selected the Delta Junction project for a brownfield assessment. Its goal was not to fully remediate the site because that would be too costly. Rather, it was to determine if the site could be safely developed.
The first phase of the assessment targeted known problems, with the collection of samples from areas where little data had been collected. The characterization work consisted of a geoprobe investigation using real-time data analyses technologies to guide the investigation in the field. The work delineated the presence of residual contamination that was likely to impede future property use and normal construction activities. More contaminated soil also was excavated and removed from the site.
DEC recently received the site’s final cleanup report. Residual contamination remains at depth on the property. Groundwater wasn’t investigated because the drilling equipment met refusal at 30 feet below the surface. However, a clean water supply can be provided to future structures by tying into a water well supply system in the area. The residual weathered diesel concentrations are not suspected of being a vapor intrusion threat. Reasonable land use controls should allow for the safe use of the site by Delta Junction to expand its tourism market. An informal determination that the site is “ready for reuse” has been made, and the state is looking at transferring the property to the community.
Today, the triangle still goes unnoticed by most tourists passing through. But Delta Junction has a vision. The city has engineered plans for the construction of the End of the Alaska Highway Arch. The arch would extend over the Alaska Highway, with one leg on the triangle and the other across the road. Plans for future tourism facilities and operations also are underway pending transfer of the land. The site one day will mark the end of a highway that’s a world-famous engineering marvel.
