Navy study to urge razing Moffett Field's Hangar One
A Navy study due out Friday will recommend demolishing the historic Hangar One at Moffett Field in Mountain View, the agency announced in a newspaper advertisement.
``It's totally unacceptable,'' said Lenny Siegel, founder of the Save Hangar One Committee. ``The hangar is irreplaceable. There ought to be a way to save it without all the hazardous substance built into it.''
Hangar One -- built in 1933 to house the airship U.S.S. Macon -- was found to be contaminated with lead, asbestos and PCBs in the late 1990s. The Navy is responsible for cleaning up Moffett Field, which once was a Naval Air Station. NASA Ames Research Center now occupies the land.
To what extent and how the Navy cleans up Moffett Field have come under fire in the past.
Now taking center stage in the cleanup debate is how the Navy will remediate the contaminated hangar, which some consider a national landmark, akin to the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
The Navy's engineering evaluation and cost analysis study for Hangar One will detail 13 options for cleaning up the 200-foot-high and 300-foot-wide hangar.
The Navy is usually tight-lipped about its Moffett Field decisions until the studies are issued, but broke this tradition last week by placing an ad in Friday's edition of the local community weekly, the Mountain View Voice. Navy officials were unavailable for comment Sunday.
The contents of the ad quickly circulated through an e-mail message network established by Save Hangar One committee members.
``The recommended alternative consists of complete demolition and off-site disposal of Hangar One,'' the ad states.
The ad also said as part of demolition, the Navy would document the structure's history with such things as photos and drawings as well as mark the hangar site with something ``to denote the size of the structure,'' as it once stood.
Demolition ``provides the best solution because the contaminant source (the hangar siding and structure) would be completely controlled by removing the source from the site,'' the ad said.
The report will come out Friday for a 30-day public review period. A public meeting in building 943 at Moffett Field will be held by the Navy on May 23 from 7 to 9 p.m. to discuss the study.
It won't be clear why demolition is the best option for the Navy until the report comes out, but it's likely the other possible options, such as encapsulating the structure to contain the pollutants, proved costlier and required some form of maintenance in the future, something the Navy and NASA would frown upon.
Siegel said he wasn't surprised by the Navy's recommendation since the ``Navy didn't start out with that goal'' of preserving the hangar to allow for reuse.
``It will be a terrible loss to the entire community,'' said Bob Moss, who sits on the Restoration Advisory Board, a Navy set-up community group charged with overseeing its Moffett Field cleanup. ``Not only is it a landmark, but if it was made usable it would be a valuable opportunity for an awful lot of organizations to move in there and use it effectively.''
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