WAFTA is an acronym that stands for the Western Area Fire Training Association. It is an organization of eleven cities in Hennepin and Carver Counties that formed an association in the 1970’s to manage a new training center for their respective volunteer fire departments.
The WAFTA cities are: Mound, Excelsior, Watertown, Mayer, St. Bonny, Long Lake, Victoria, Eden Prairie, Chaska, Chanhassen, and (maybe) Waconia.
The fire training center was a former NIKE missle base granted to WAFTA by the Department of Defense. The feds were decommissioning the base and it seemed like a great reuse for the site.
There was an excellent article in the Sunday, July 13th edition of the Star Tribune about WAFTA.
There is a problem with WAFTA. The site is contaminated. The other problem with WAFTA is that the polluting parties are in various states of willingness and ability to pay for their pro rata share of the clean-up costs at the site.
For example, in addition to the WAFTA cities, Minnegasco and NSP both trained their employees in fire fighting techniques at the WAFTA site. There is som evidence to suggest that they actually trained there more than some of the WAFTA cities.
And it is almost certain that the Department of Defense left the site contaminated when they turned the site over to WAFTA. Some of the contamination at the site could only be traced to the military use of the site.
The WAFTA cities, as the owners of the site, have taken this project on and will provide a drive to complete the clean-up of the site. With this much needed federal appropriation of $250,000, it will be possible to get to the next step of apportioning financial responsibility.
Thank you Congressman John Kline for your help with this appropriation. You have enabled us to take the first step to resolving this issue.
