ESTCP and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) are sponsoring an end-to-end demonstration of Classification technologies in a Treatability Study at the former Camp San Luis Obispo, California. This study aims to go beyond demonstrating technical success to defining a complete process for implementation, beginning with setting specific objectives for what must be removed from the site in conjunction with regulators at the start to verification that the objectives were met at the end.

Technical Project Planning Meeting Phase 4 for the project was held Tuesday, June 10, 2014, in San Luis Obispo, CA. This meeting served to update all project stakeholders on the status and planned schedule for the Treatability Study and allowed the project team to work through comments on the Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP). The QAPP will be a key element in standardizing the work flow and quality checks needed to transition classification to common use. The QAPP for this project is based on the template being developed by the Advanced Geophysical Classification Subgroup of the Intergovernmental Data Quality Task Force. This template will be alpha tested in conjunction with the Treatability Study.

The Treatability Study will determine whether advanced classification is a feasible remedial alternative for future work at this site. The study objective statement includes conducting a detection survey with a threshold guaranteed to detect all 37-mm projectiles to 30 cm depth and to remove all UXO detected. This, of course, will mean that larger UXO will be detected and removed to a greater depth.

Because of the steep slopes and rough terrain at the site, the contractor, CH2M HILL, has chosen to use the TEMTADS 2x2 sensor for both dynamic and cued data collection over the roughly 14,000 anomalies in the seven acre demonstration site. An extensive QC and QA seeding program will be used to measure and document project quality throughout the study.

Geophysical data collection will begin on July 14, 2014. Cued data collection is scheduled for early August and the intrusive investigation should begin in October. A draft treatability study report should be available shortly after the first of the year.