While it was encouraging to hear last week that the Tooele Army Depot will have remediated all soil contamination that poses a risk on the base within the next 18 months, it was equally disheartening to learn that a cleanup of tainted groundwater under the base is still years away.

Groundwater contamination at the depot was first detected in the early 1980s. But it took the Army until 1993 before it took steps to correct the problem by installing a pump-and-treat system. That system ran for 12 years at an approximate cost of $1.5 million per year. In 2005, it was determined that the $18 million dollars spent on the project had not significantly decreased the contamination, and the pumps were shut off.

Now the Army, the Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Quality are in the process of formulating a new plan to clean up the groundwater plume. Unfortunately, that effort is moving ahead at the speed of government. According to officials close to the situation, the plan itself may still take several years to formulate before any action will be taken.

In the meantime, the threat of contamination to the aquifer beneath Tooele Valley grows. The main contaminant in the two plumes, which measure a combined 1.5 miles wide, is trichloroethylene (TCE), a known carcinogen that was banned from production in the 1970s. As time goes by, the plume will dilute into the larger aquifer, endangering us all.

Concerned citizens can get an update on the depot's cleanup effort on March 12 from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., at the Tooele County Health Department auditorium. They should also take this opportunity to demand that the Army and its partners accelerate the process for cleaning up the depot's contaminated groundwater. To quote General George S. Patton: "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week."

The Tooele Army Depot helped build Tooele County, but that legacy will certainly be tainted if swift steps aren't taken to clean up the Army's mess and protect the health of current and future county residents.