employees actively working on base. December 23, 2009 marked the last day of Navy Reserve activity at NAS Brunswick when the Navy Operational Support Center lowered the National Ensign and closed its doors for the last time. Captain Scott F. Walton, the NOSC Commanding Officer, had previously been the last C.O. of Patrol Squadron VP-92 Minutemen, a Navy Reserve squadron made up of many local Maine citizens. VP-92 operated out of NAS Brunswick from 1996 to 2007. At an onsite ceremony on May 31, 2011 the base was officially decommissioned. Navy officials handed over the remaining property to the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority. Property is being redeveloped for civilian use as Brunswick Landing. This started with the opening of the Brunswick Executive Airport. Southern Maine Community College has built a new campus on the site. Environmental problems The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared the base a Superfund Site in 1987 for chemical contamination after open-air detonation of ordnance. From 2007 until 2015, the Navy assessed and removed ordnance from the area, spending $3–4 million on site clean-up. In July 2015, EPA declared the area safe with so called "land use controls", such as signs and fencing. In September 2015, it became known that the Navy’s closure draft report mentioned contamination with perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs). They had been "recorded at levels above the EPA’s provisional health advisory", a number derived from lab tests on animals, at several places, many of which were associated with past use of PFC-containing fire-fighting foam, such as areas around the airplane runway and between hangars. Groundwater is contaminated at the former fire department building and the foam storage building. Restoration Advisory Board members criticized the land use control plan as insufficient, after PFCs found in well water at Pease Air Force Base in neighboring New Hampshire had exposed people including children as blood monitoring has shown. The Air Force had been testing 82 former and active installations nationwide for PFCs. See also Brunswick Executive Airport South Weymouth Naval Air Station, closed in 1996 VP-8 VP-10 VP-26 VR-62 VP-92 VP-11 VP-21 VP-23 VP-44 References External links NAS Brunswick Home Page NAS Brunswick at GlobalSecurity.org https://web.archive.org/web/20080513124508/http://www.brunswickme.org/parkrec/programs/flyers/Brunswick%20NAS%20Assessment%20Study.pdf No. 1849 Royal Navy Squadron (includes photos taken at the air station as well as two other airports in Maine) VP-MAU VPU-1 Military installations in Maine United States Naval Air Stations Defunct airports in Maine Buildings and structures in Brunswick, Maine Military