Until recently, the Air Force Civil Engineer Center estimated that completing the environmental cleanup at the Williams fuel storage area would take hundreds of years. A new approach, though, has cut that time down to decades.

Located at Sossaman Road and Ulysses Ave, the area known as Site 12 was used by the Air Force as the main fuel storage and distribution point from 1941 through 1991. Leaks and spills from when the base was active caused petroleum contaminants to seep into the groundwater. To address the cleanup, the Air Force Civil Engineer Center and its contractor installed an innovative technology to remove contamination quicker and more completely than previous technologies used at the site.

"What was going to take hundreds of years, with common cleanup methods, is now going to be completed in a much shorter time," said Cathy Jerrard, Air Force environmental engineer. "Even better, the majority of the volume of fuel will be removed in just 13 months."

The Air Force worked closely with state and federal environmental agencies on the new approach and early results have all parties anticipating a reduction in cleanup time from over 100 years to a couple of decades.

This is made possible by the reinvention of a highly effective technology used in the oil industry for decades. Steam Enhanced Extraction, or SEE, involves injecting high-pressure steam into the groundwater in order to heat and free petroleum for removal. Contaminants are removed from the extracted water and vapors to achieve cleanup standards prior to discharge.

"Over the past ten years there have been great strides made in applying this technology to environmental problems like the one here at Site 12," said Everett Wessner, project manager for AMEC Foster Wheeler, the Air Force's remediation contractor. "Because of those advances, this technology is the best solution to deal with the fairly substantial problem we have at the site."

The system will be in operation for about 13 months and is located in the middle of one of Mesa's more active redevelopment areas. Situated between a college campus, an airport, and Army Reserve Center, cleanup of the site is paving the way for further redevelopment success at the former base.

The Steam Enhanced Extraction project at Site 12 is an outstanding example of the Air Force Civil Engineer Center taking action to ensure long-term protection of human health and the environment at the former base.