After years of cleanup, Fort Ord lands slated for reuse have been cleared of munitions.

When the U.S. Department of Defense decommissioned Fort Ord in 1994, the soils of the Army’s largest infantry training base held an archive of 20th-century warfare.

Generations of soldiers – from World War I to World War II to the Vietnam War – trained there and left lodged in the earth bullets, artillery projectiles, rockets, hand grenades, land mines, pyrotechnics, dynamite and other demolition material.

The end of the Cold War spurred the Base Realignment and Closure process, and Fort Ord shifted into cleanup mode.

The Army began the removal of hazardous objects, but local leaders eager to expand their urban footprints deemed the Army’s progress too slow. In 2007, the Army and Fort Ord Reuse Authority struck a deal called an Environmental Services Cooperative Agreement, privatizing cleanup efforts on the most prized real estate.

Now, more than two decades later, a 3,340-acre swath of former base land has been cleared by environmental regulators for civilian reuse.

A $100-million grant from Army funded the work of field crews, who deployed metal detectors to locate any items that were explosive, projectile or chemical in nature, and conducted controlled detonations when necessary.

Over the years, the crews removed nearly 5,000 bombs and other dangerous munitions as well as 50,000 pounds of munition debris like shrapnel and grenade fragments. Complicating the work of detecting and removing hazards, the contaminated soil was also full of sensor-triggering metallic items that aren’t dangerous, material referred to as “residual Army cultural debris,” which can include anything from sardine cans to belt buckles.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California Department of Toxic Substances Control have been reviewing the remediation work in stages, and gave final clearance March 29.

Local officials and Army representatives are still working to lift complicated legal restrictions on the use of these lands. Stan Cook, a program manager who oversees the cleanup on behalf of FORA, expects the paperwork to be completed this summer.

“We are almost there,” Cook says. “We have reached an important milestone.”

A document known as the base reuse plan will guide local jurisdictions as they decide how to redevelop the land, with some portions designated for residential and commercial use and others for open space.

The cleaning up and opening of new land for development comes as FORA, the agency tasked with coordinating the civilian transition of the former Fort Ord, faces a sunset date of June 2020; officials are debating how to redistribute the agency’s powers and obligations. A pending state bill, SB 189, would extend FORA for two more years to allow for transition.

Calling the ESCA cleanup a “great success story,” Maeve Clancy, a remedial project manager at the EPA, says Fort Ord could be headed toward a partial de-listing from the Superfund program, but additional paperwork is required.

Munitions clearance efforts remain ongoing on a separate chunk of Fort Ord lands, thousands of acres located within the Fort Ord National Monument. These areas were not part of the 2007 ESCA deal and would remain on the Superfund list in the case of a partial deletion.