Standing on a bluff at the northern edge of the vast Badger Army Ammunition Plant, you can see land swept flat by ancient glaciers, "driftless" areas missed by the ice and remnants of prairie, oak savanna and thick woods.

"It's a beautiful view from the bluff," said Craig Karr of the Department of Natural Resources.

"The geologists are very excited about this being a public property," added Karr, who will oversee public input when some of this area is eventually transferred from the Army to the DNR. "It is unique. It shows the ancient sea beds, the glaciation, the terminal moraine."

Someday hikers may be able to trek through this land on a trail Karr's agency hopes to build from Devil's Lake to the Wisconsin River. But that day is still far into the future. Though the Army declared the 7,354-acre plant on Highway 12 near Baraboo surplus property 10 years ago, it is expected to be another five years before land transfers to the DNR, the Ho-Chunk Nation and others are completed.

Meanwhile, army contractors continue to tear down buildings and clean up contamination left by decades of explosives manufacturing at the World War II-era plant, and neighbors continue to raise concerns about pollution.

A committee that helped plan future uses for the site has suggested building a visitor center that would feature the natural history of the site, the history of the Ho-Chunk and settlers in the area as well as the story of the Badger Ammunition Plant. The 21-member Badger Reuse Committee -- convened in 2000 by the Sauk County Board of Supervisors with assistance from U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison -- included representatives of local communities, state and federal governments and the Ho-Chunk Nation.

"The reuse committee would like to see as much reconstruction of prairie and oak savanna as possible," Karr said.

But progress has been excruciatingly slow since 1998 when the Army declared the property surplus.

Reasons for the delay include bureaucracy, paperwork, federal funding snafus, disagreements about who will get which property, and disputes about levels of contamination and proper procedures for remediation.

"Badger is a very highly contaminated site and a complex site," said Eileen Pierce of the state Department of Natural Resources. "The long time this is taking is in part due to that complexity and contamination and in part due to funding." Pierce said required Army and DNR procedures, including public comment periods, lengthened the process.

There has also been disagreement among parties due to receive portions of the Badger plant acreage. The Ho-Chunk and the DNR did not reach final agreement on boundaries of their proposed sections until last year, and no one yet knows who will take care of three small cemeteries with graves dating back to the early 1800s.

Joan Kenney, installation director for the Badger plant, said the Army didn't even get money for demolition until 2004. Recent budget cuts also caused temporary layoffs of some contractor employees, and work came to a halt during the last long snowy winter when it was difficult to move around the massive site.

Army officials plan to conclude work by 2012 and complete land transfers by 2013. Much progress has been made, but neighbors remain concerned about pollution issues. Regulations concerning the disposal of some of the waste materials, for instance, were not even established when the Army started using the site to make ammunition.

"We feel strongly that all of this has to be cleaned up," said Laura Olah, head of Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger, formed by people who live near the site. "The foundation for successful reuse is a clean, healthy environment for animals and people."

According to Olah, the Army has approached the task of clean up by treating symptoms, rather than underlying problems. For instance, she said, a wastewater treatment system that dates to 1990 is being used to remove pollutants from groundwater before it is discharged into the Wisconsin River. But removing more contaminated soil first would have solved the problem long-term.

"It's always best to address the source," Olah said. "The remedies at Badger are mostly to cover them up instead of cleaning them up. Contaminants could eventually leach."

Nearby residents are also concerned about the extent of contamination in former settling ponds ndsh which served as waste repositories -- at the south end of the plant and in nearby Gruber's Grove Bay on Lake Wisconsin.

An ecological assessment by Army consultants determined the settling ponds were not harming birds and mammals in the area. But Peter deFur, a consultant for Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger, says the Army's methodology was faulty.

He said the condition of wildlife at the settling pond site was compared with that of birds and mammals from other areas on the Badger site, instead of from uncontaminated areas; that larger animals should have been analyzed, that the study did not account for animals drinking contaminated water and that only one byproduct of the explosive dinitrotoluene (DNT) was analyzed.

The citizens' group also contends that the Army has not done enough to clean up polluted sediments under Gruber's Grove Bay, an inlet of Lake Wisconsin that borders the plant on the southeast.

Kenney counters that the bay has been dredged twice by the Army to make sure that fish would not accumulate mercury in the future. "We removed 88,000 cubic yards, and are not testing now. There are mercury problems all over the state, and most of it comes from coal-fired plants," she said.

But the state Department of Natural Resources sent a memo to Kenney in April sking for a meeting after tests it did on sediment under the bay showed "significantly higher" mercury levels than those identified by the Army. Kenney said such a meeting would probably not take place until fall.

People who live near the plant say the conflicting test results prove it is necessary to keep close watch on the Army's cleanup process.

"We support an enforceable measure that requires the Army to conduct biological surveys in the future (5 years and 10 years) to assure the ecological recovery of the bay," Olah said in a letter to the DNR.

She also says that without citizen complaints, the Army may have gone ahead with plans to burn abandoned buildings that had housed explosive processes, which would have released high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls into the air. PCBs were used in paint until they were banned in 1997 because of harmful health effects.

Kenney said that burning was commonly used at other military installations to burn off propellant residue, but restrictions ultimately imposed by the state of Wisconsin made it impractical here.

"Burning just one big building in a year would have hit the limit on emissions. We would have been here 100 years!"

Despite criticism from local residents that the Army has cut corners on cleanup in order to minimize costs, it has nevertheless spent significant amounts.

According to Kenney, the Army has spent about $143.5 million on environmental work and $57.6 million on operations and maintenance for demolition.

The DNR's Karr, for one, is satisfied: "The Army is doing a wonderful job of cleaning it up. I don't expect to find any contaminants when we get the land."

Contamination was found at Badger long before the 1998 decision to declare the property surplus. A remedial investigation in 1988 found that a plume of contaminated groundwater was moving toward the edge of the site, so a groundwater extraction and treatment system was put in place in 1990.

Army officials say they have taken great care with its current landfill, which is being used for materials from demolished buildings that could not be recycled, including carefully packaged asbestos shingles. A clay liner was installed to prevent any harmful materials from reaching groundwater, and a cap will be installed after the landfill is full.

A large excavated and lined space for another landfill will be left for the probable next landowner, the DNR. If the agency doesn't want it, the Army will close it, Kenney said.

But Olah's group remains concerned about six old landfills on the site that they fear could be contaminating groundwater. Landfills in the past were often merely unlined holes in the ground.

Since 1988, when new federal regulations went in effect, the Army has placed more than 200 test wells around the site to check groundwater. Neighbors' wells also are tested every three months, and some that showed contamination in the past have been replaced by the Army.

"We have had to replace five home wells," Kenney said. The Army tests for dangerous explosives and solvents, and "every sample costs us money," Kenney said.

The Army is still determining what to do with the settling ponds near Gruber's Grove Bay that have been dry since 1975. "We still have to decide if we need soil remediation in pond bottoms," Kenney said.

As for the remaining buildings, 700 have been demolished and 300 have yet to be taken apart. Another 400 are expected to be transferred to new property owners after being found clear of contaminants. These buildings have been cleared of explosives and asbestos, according to Kenney, who said that two explosives experts check every structure to make sure.

Army officials are taking great care to remove any contaminants prior to transfer, Kenney said, because the Army remains responsible even after the properties change hands and officials don't want to have to revisit the problems in the future.

"After we take buildings down, we scrape soil out and take samples to see if there is any residual contamination," Kenney explained. "We check and double check to make sure it has been removed."

After 10 years, only one large parcel of the Badger ammo plant -- nearly 2,000 acres of the more than 7,000-acre site -- has been transferred to another owner, the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center, which had previous operations on the site.

Eventually the state Department of Transportation will use a parcel to straighten dangerous curves on Highway 78 and the Bluffview Sanitary District will take over wastewater treatment facilities on the site to serve a community across Highway 12 as well as future landowners on the plant site.

The largest remaining pieces of property are slated to go to the DNR and the Ho-Chunk. The DNR's Pierce said "one of the big achievements" of the last year was that the DNR, Army and Ho-Chunk agreed on property boundaries.

But these transfers will not occur until the Army completes its own findings of suitability for the parcels.

The DNR plans to use its 3,850-acre parcel for recreational use and the Ho-Chunk plan to graze buffalo and restore prairie on their 1,552-acre site.

The public, however, will not be allowed onto the property unsupervised for several years. Though some land will probably transfer to the DNR this fall, it will still be fenced and guarded until the Army completes its cleanup, Karr said.

The DNR cannot start its master planning process for the site until the property is transferred, and a reuse committee determined previously that the site must be managed collaboratively by all the property owners.

"It is our dream to open that property to the public to link Devil's Lake State Park to that swath of property and to the Wisconsin River," Pierce said. "We hope for prairie restoration, but there is no master plan."

Karr noted that the reuse committee wants no motorized recreation.

"Hunting would be OK, but there will be some debate about what kind of hunting will be allowed," he predicted.

The trail the DNR would like to see from Devil's Lake State Park to Lake Wisconsin could also connect to the Ice Age Trail, which runs through the park.

Overall, Kenney and Karr would like to see the huge Badger site become a paradise for area residents to explore and wildlife to live.

Birds and animals that need uninterrupted space to thrive -- including meadowlarks, bobolinks and dickcissels -- would do well at the site, Karr said.

"It is right next to the Baraboo Hills, a huge block of wooded area with unique bird life," Karr said. "From a naturalists' standpoint, the property will be a real gem."

Recycling helps pay for cleanup

There are literally tons of recycling possibilities at the Badger Army Ammunition Plant, with hundreds of pieces of equipment, abandoned buildings and small items now considered decorative or historical available for reuse. And the Army is making the most of it.

Mike Sitton, property administrator for the Badger plant, takes pride in the amount of recycling that has been done since the Army declared the property surplus 10 years ago.

More than $200,000 has been raised selling such items on E-Bay as signs, fireboxes, insulators, lights and items such as big brass gauges that were used to keep track of pressure levels in steam-powered equipment. Another very popular item -- now popular in interior decoration -- has been radiators, which were too bulky to sell online but were sold by bid.

All together, more than $3 million has been earned from recycling sales.

Much of that income came from bids to take apart and carry away scrap from whole buildings -- after asbestos fibers and traces of explosives had been removed.

Kramer's Technical Services of Clinton, Iowa, is one of the companies that made successful bids to take down and remove buildings from the site. Last week one of their crews was using a huge John Deere metal shear to tear apart a former waste processing building that handled wood remodeling debris.

"Prices are high for scrap, and we sell it to a scrap yard," said Henry Kramer, whose company has taken about 10 buildings at the plant for recycling. He noted that the market is good in part because China is buying copper and lead.

Structural steel is also in demand, and copper is especially valuable.

"Every two weeks or so we have a bid process, for everything from desks to water towers to scrap metal," said Joan Kenney, installation director for the plant. "Piping, tanks, and mixing equipment, all that metal has recycle value, and a small amount of equipment could be used whole."

Half of the money earned from recycling helps pay for deconstruction of the plant, and the other half goes into an Army morale program that provides gymnasiums, pools and other facilities for the troops.

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Sept. 11: Badger consultant would not provide opinion

Aug. 13: New test wells proposed for Badger

Aug. 6: Fate of Badger cemeteries unknown

July 30: Green Zenns Arrive at Badger plant

July 30: Badger plant study shows no wildlife contamination