DALLAS NAS/NWIRP-DNR

Recent study on Dallas NWIRP (Naval Weapons facility) back in the 1990s has yielded fascinating info about the Navy's attempts to remediate the contaminated plume under 80% of the facility. Did you get that? 80%! That is one huge plume.
A unique clean up technique used was air stripping, which pumped poisonous gasses from the ground "into the atmosphere," according to one official report.
After studying a photo of an air stripper online and learning toxic chemicals are usually filtered and screened from the air people breathe, I remembered a past conversation with a helpful EPA manager. He told me a million gallons of water were poured into the clogged NWIRP aquifer; and that was generally confirmed by these same 1997-1999 Navy reports, which added that trenches had to be built to catch the overfow from Cottonwood Bay and Mountain Creek Lake.(I later read that 200 million gallons were poured in, but who's counting at this late date?)
Clearly, I saw that the Navy was very active in major remediation activities and knew back in the 90s -if not the 80s - that our Dallas facilities could never be fully restored. Further, the Navy recommended raising allowable levels of chemicals and reducing expectations for clean up even back then, according to their own reports. Yet, at the same time, the Navy tried hard - some might say desparately - to make the high chemical levels in groundwater and surface water more palatable to citizens with the air stripper, the massive dilution, etc. (The navy base had its own wells in the past, but converted to "city water" due to groundwater contamination. There was a bit of a scandal concerning this as communication about water condition was poor, pipes were poor, and some employees drank the toxic stuff for a while. The story is online to be Googled if you're interested.)
But back briefly to feared backlash from the local citizenry... I loved and must include the line from one report: "Since public relations seems to be a concern..." Oh, some things never change! People hate to be poisoned!
Yes, the 90s was an an exciting decade on Jefferson Blvd in Grand Prairie. Did anyone-any news operation-know what was going on back then? As an ordinary citizen, I surely didn't; but then my mom was very ill, and I may not have noticed televised reports. I somehow suspect there weren't any.
Looking at the military base and surrounding area today, more problematic sites have been and probably will be identified.
Though the goal of remediation was to stop migration of the plume, migration has occurred. Seems to be a fact... But I'm asking: Have new toxic "source" sites been discovered? Which sites result from migration and which are "new" long-overlooked toxic chemical sites? Can one be sure? And who is responsible for the damage, especially if homes are atop the contamination? We may be in a post-treatment period of discussing that.
After twelve years, it's difficult to tell what effects were caused by original Navy pollution and what effects or changes were caused by extreme remediation activities. It's kind of like diagnosing a patient who is staying sick in the hospital as treatment progresses. Is the cure dangerous like the disease? Did clean-up measures damage structures or pathways or force contamination into new cracks and crevices? What if a migration pathway was dug up when a trench was created? The whole story of how contamination occurred could be rewritten. Hopefully not, but when a lot of money is at stake, it's smart to be careful.
Then continuing the matter of trenches, could the dilution of pollution skew important test results-hiding what's really wrong? And lastly, I'm wondering if clean up efforts make liability harder to prove when future damage is found.
We may debate and disagree about what the Navy did and didn't do and why - but one thing seems clear. Dallas NAS/NWIRP is DNR - do not, cannot, will not rescusitate. That's why the Navy is trying to exit the scene of the crime - quietly? reverently? Will they pay Dallas any more than their respect?