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Federal Facility Response Awards Underground Storage Tanks Awards Superfund Awards Emergency Management Awards Regional Science Awards Environmental Justice Superfund Enforcement Awards RCRA Corrective Action Awards Resource Conservation Challenge Awards Cross-Program Revitalization Awards Brownfields
United States Environmental Protection Agency

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2005 National Notable Achievement Awards
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Federal Facility Response Award Recipients

Individual
Tim Woolheater, Region 4

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Tim Woolheater’s outstanding leadership, innovation, community outreach, and partnerships have played a vital role in the cleanup and beneficial reuse of regional federal facilities. Four major federal facilities where Tim has been engaged represent more than 35% of the Federal Facilities Branch’s accomplishments over the past two years.

Tim’s effective leadership and innovative thinking are reflected in his ability to jump start site projects and minimize problems. For instance, he obtained land use control agreements two years prior to a national resolution. Through strong partnerships with the state, the Army, and community leaders, he successfully led the transfer of the Volunteer Army Ammunition Plant (VAAP), a large and difficult site, into private hands five years ahead of schedule. When Tim was assigned to the VAAP, he found a disgruntled group micro-managed by political concerns contesting each aspect of a 262-acre transfer that had stagnated despite EPA involvement. Tim opened a dialogue with the city, county, and state leaders that created a level of confidence not seen before. As a result of the trust that Tim established, local opinions evolved from wanting the state, rather than EPA, to conduct cleanup oversight to the creation of a local trust that will purchase the entire site.

As a member of the 45th Space Wing Partnering Team, which received the Secretary of Defense Remediation Team/Individual award during his tenure, he helped search for a successful DNAPL remediation technology, which is greatly needed at many federal facility sites. The search involved implementing more than 40 innovative characterization, treatment, and monitoring technologies and strategies. He has reviewed or approved more than 1,000 documents on eight different facilities in the last five years, and despite this workload, serves as the Federal Facilities Branch CERCLIS coordinator.


Team
Weldon Spring Team, Region 7
Dan Wall, Tom Lorenz, Dan Shiel, Bob Richards, and Diana Reeves

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The Weldon Spring Team has shown extraordinary leadership qualities in designing and implementing innovative strategies to manage the environmental programs at the former Army Weldon Spring Ordnance Works. When the cleanup stalled over the proposed groundwater remedy, the team worked with the community and Federal agencies, who were sharply divided, to obtain acceptance for monitored natural attenuation with institutional controls. This required that the team develop logical approaches and adequate assurances that the controls would be enforced through existing and future agreements. The use of monitored natural attenuation with institutional controls for the groundwater remedy has saved considerable investigative and cleanup costs while providing a protective solution that the community could accept.

The team developed another effective strategy that culminated in the development of a separate long-term stewardship agreement with the state as a party. Although the state was not a party to the original federal facilities agreement, this ancillary federal facilities agreement gave the state a significant role in the development of the final remedy documents and the future maintenance of the site.

To the team’s credit, after approximately 20 years and one billion dollars in public money, the Weldon Spring site has become the first major Department of Energy Superfund site to reach construction completion and transition to the Legacy Management program. It is also one of the first major NPL Formerly Used Defense Sites to reach the long-term operation and maintenance stage.

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Page Last Modified: May 17, 2005