Content area
Full Text
The Installation Restoration Program (IRP) has been the Army's primary cleanup program within the Defense Environmental Restoration Program (DERP) since the 1980s. Historically, IRP focused on cleaning up sites contaminated with hazardous substances that posed toxicological risks. This changed in 2001 with the establishment of a new Army cleanup program that targeted military munitions.
The Military Munitions Response Program (MMRP) was formalized in September 2001 when the Department of Defense (DOD) published new management guidance for DERP. A new program category under DERP, MMRP addresses environmental health and safety hazards associated with unexploded ordnance (UXO), discarded military munitions (DMM), and munitions constituents on current and former military sites as a complement to the highly successful IRP.
In December 2003, the Army fulfilled its first MMRP requirement-an inventory of its former training ranges and munitions sites to identify sites eligible for MMRP. In fulfilling its obligations under MMRP, the Army's first priority is the protection of human health, safety, and the environment. The Army went beyond the letter of the requirement and expanded its data gathering efforts to account for additional pertinent information. As a result, the Army not only expedited the program's decision-making process-with human health and safety the top priority-but also put itself ahead of schedule and established a precedent for MMRP success.
Legislative Background
This MMRP inventory effort, part of a larger mission to ensure public health and environmental safety, has been underway since fiscal year (FY) 2002, when Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act. This piece of legislation set MMRP in motion by requiring the military services to complete the following:
* Develop an initial inventory of all current and former military sites within the United States, its territories, and its possessions containing or suspected of containing UXO, DMM, or munitions constituents. This helped determine the size and scope of the program. Criteria are outlined in the DERP management guide.
* Ensure that specific inventory site information is entered into the appropriate DOD environmental database. For the Army, this is the Army Environmental Database-Restoration. This site information would also be used to determine initial cost-to-complete estimates and total environmental liabilities associated with MMRP.
* Develop a response prioritization protocol for each MMRP site.
The military services were directed to include not...