A Tampa firm's specialty is clearing unexploded munitions. It found plenty in Iraq.
By LOUIS HAU
Published July 30, 2003
TAMPA - Searching for unexploded bombs at a state park in Okeechobee is one thing. Pursuing the same hair-trigger work in the Rumaila oil fields of southern Iraq is something else entirely.
It's a daunting challenge, and a lucrative business opportunity, for USA Environmental Inc. of Tampa. While the reconstruction of Iraq is dominated by U.S. industrial giants such as Bechtel Corp. and Vice President Dick Cheney's former corporate home, Halliburton, the 5-year-old ordnance disposal company is among the smaller players getting in on the effort.
From their headquarters in the Benjamin Center office park near Tampa International Airport, USA Environmental president Jonathan Chionchio and vice president John Adams oversee the search and disposal of unexploded land mines and munitions around critical equipment in the Rumaila fields. Their contract, which may bring in as much as $70-million, is with the Army Corps of Engineers.
"We're proud to do the work in Iraq," Chionchio said. "We're most proud of our workers. They've done an excellent job under extreme conditions."
Chionchio said all of the company's personnel in Iraq are military veterans who have graduated from the U.S. Naval Explosive Ordnance Disposal School, which is now located at the Eglin Air Force Base near Valparaiso.
Because the Corps of Engineers requires that training, the company recruits among recently discharged military personnel. Chionchio notes that USA Environmental has never suffered an explosives-related accident.
"If you're properly trained for it, you can mitigate the risks until you nearly eliminate them," he said.
USA Environmental's workers wear Kevlar body armor and transparent Lexan face shields for mine-clearing operations and flak jackets and helmets for other operations. Once they find something that needs to be disposed of, they attach an explosive and blow it up.
With temperatures in the desert often topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit, frequent breaks are necessary to ensure that workers can maintain the intense concentration they need to do their work, Adams said.
"Our goal is, everybody comes home every night with their fingers and toes," Adams said. "And we've done that."
USA Environmental is working in Iraq under a contract the company won in 2000 from the Corps of Engineers. The company was one of six the Corps hired to dispose of unexploded ordnance at firing ranges, bombing sites and shuttered military facilities throughout the United States. After the U.S. strike against Iraq in March, the Corps assigned USA Environmental and EOD Technology Inc. of Knoxville, Tenn., to help clear hazards from reconstruction sites in Iraq. The military uses its own personnel in combat zones and active bombing ranges, but not for other ordnance-disposal work.
USA Environmental's work in Iraq began in early April. It's a major step for the company, which employs about 40 full-time workers and an additional 40 to 80 temporary contractors. The company has done work throughout the United States, as well as in Canada and the Virgin Islands.
In the Tampa Bay area, USA Environmental has checked for hidden hazards in well-drilling sites at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. The company also has searched for unexploded ordnance in the Brooksville area to clear the way for completion of the Suncoast Parkway and in Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park in Okeechobee, much of which had been used previously as a bombing range for B-17s.
The Iraqi project is the company's first outside of North America and U.S. territory, and it's being paid more than twice the value of its previous largest project.
It's also USA Environmental's riskiest assignment.
At the company's domestic work sites, the military usually has a database of the ordnance that was used at a given site over the years. But in Iraq "it's all new, it's uncharted," Chionchio said, with unexploded materials originating from countries including Russia, China and NATO allies. Much of the ordnance in the area dates back to past conflicts, such as the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91 and the lengthy Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.
"Over there, you don't know what you have," he said, "and you don't know where it came from."
The workers in Iraq can earn roughly twice the company's stateside salary ranging from $35,000 to $65,000 once the company includes further compensation for working in a remote and dangerous location and for added risk.
At the peak of the mission, USA Environmental had 29 employees based at Camp Commando, a Marine Corps base camp in Kuwait, although it's now down to about a dozen. The employees travel up to two hours every day from the camp to pipelines, oil-gas separation plants and other facilities that, once cleared, will be repaired by Kellogg Brown & Root, a unit of Halliburton.
Chionchio and Adams founded USA Environmental after purchasing the assets of their employer, CMS Environmental, in 1998 from CMS Group, a Tampa maker of weapons components. CMS Group was owned at the time by Daimler-Benz AG of Germany and later purchased by Primex Technologies Inc. of St. Petersburg. (Primex was acquired by General Dynamics in 2001.)
Before joining CMS in 1992, Chionchio had worked as an engineer at Emerson Electric Co. of St. Louis. Adams had just retired as a sergeant major in the U.S. Army, where he had specialized in ordnance disposal.
Despite their company's recent experience in Iraq, Chionchio and Adams plan to keep the focus of the business on the domestic market.
"It's expensive to do international business, it takes a great deal of knowledge and wherewithal," he said, noting that the Army Corps arranged for all logistical support, security and accommodations for USA Environmental's workers in Iraq.
While ordnance disposal might appear to present an unconventional career choice, the post-Cold War decommissioning of U.S. military bases has created a business opportunity.
"Nobody thought anyone would ever go there," Adams said of the sites. "Now as things have expanded, urban sprawl and all that, these things are turning into prime real estate."
- Louis Hau can be reached at hau@sptimes.com or 813 226-3404.
