Cleaning Up

In January 2004 3 RPSC geologist/environmental techs showed up to clean up the last two old dump sites behind the station. The first two phases of this effort took place in 1996 and 1999 when "dump site 2" behind the helo pad was cleaned up. This year the crew tackled "site 1" behind the shipping containers along the road, and "site 3" near the old fresh water pond. The debris was excavated, separated, and put into cubic-yard plastic totes. Lots of interesting and unusual stuff was found, including old hammers and shovels, drill bits, plates, liquor bottles, eyeglasses, and canned food.

According to Glenn Grant (who also furnished these photos), "The funniest things they found were a tube of diaper rash ointment, and a sealed jar of Kraft spreadable cheese. The cheese sat around in the galley for a week or two, and people started making an "eat the cheese" pool of money for anyone who would eat it. Several did! Oh geeze, that was gross. It was nasty stuff, but it still looked like it did originally. Must be lots of preservatives..." Anyway, nothing is left but rock and a big hole in the ground. And a few souvenirs (below right). This year a total of 153 cubic yards of debris, about 154 tons, was removed.