BARABOO, Wis. (AP) – Hikers may someday be able to walk across a land swept flat by ancient glaciers on a trail from Devil’s Lake State Park to the Wisconsin River.

But that’s still years away at the site of the vast Badger Army Ammunition Plant near Baraboo.

“The geologists are very excited about this being a public property,” said Craig Karr of the Department of Natural Resources. “It is unique. It shows the ancient sea beds, the glaciation, the terminal moraine.”

Karr will oversee public input when the Army eventually transfers portions of the property to the DNR.

The Army classified the 7,354-acre plant as surplus property 10 years ago, but it’s expected to take another five years before land transfers to the DNR, the Ho-Chunk Nation and others are completed.

Army contractors continue to tear down buildings and clean up contamination left by decades of explosives manufacturing at the World War II-era plant.

A committee that helped plan future uses for the site has suggested building a visitor center with information on the site’s natural history, the Ho-Chunk and settlers in the area as well as the story of the Badger Ammunition Plant.

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

Progress has been slow in the decade since the Army declared the property surplus thanks to paperwork, federal funding problems, 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 DNR. “The long time this is taking is in part due to that complexity and contamination and in part due to funding.”

The property division was up in the air until recently
as well.

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 to the early 1800s.

Army officials plan to conclude work by 2012 and complete land transfers by 2013.

Nearby residents are concerned about contamination, including settling ponds that served as waste repositories for the plant.

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, said the Army’s methodology was faulty and needs closer examination.

The citizens’ group also contends 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.

Residents also have complained that corners may have been cut during cleanup, but Karr is satisfied.

“The Army is doing a wonderful job of cleaning it up,” he said. “I don’t expect to find any contaminants when we get the land.”

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

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