unnecessary collections and/or analyses.

Every effort was made to deter-

mine the minimum numbers of samples required to provide a meaningful
statement of the conditions.

This was done by random sampling techniques,

careful grouping of islands, stratification only when necessary or indicated, objective investigations of known anomalies, burial areas and
trouble spots, austere depth distribution determinations (profiles), etc.
For example, the problem of finding a proverbial "needle in a haystack"

(say, a 10-foot wide by 50-foot-long burial trench) within the tétal land
area Of approximateiy 2.5 square miles, with probability of nearly 1.00,
would require, on a random basis alone, over 100,000 locations to be

sampled to a minimum depth of the top of the suspected burial mass.
Consideration of such a task was obviously out of the question,

On

the other hand, use of insight gained from the background study would
limit locations for such burials down to just a few areas on particular
islands.

This insight was extended to the whole soils effort to minimize

the required collections to a manageable and practical quantity.
Required Information
Since a cleanup effort would require preliminary cost estimates on
amounts of soil to be disposed of a sample plan was designed to provide
at least gross estimates of volumes of contaminated soils on those islands
where such volumes were thought to exist or had high probability for existence.
Where construction activities were extensive, the past mixing of
contaminated soils would make a specific determination of soil volumes
impossible without an economically excessive number of soil samples being
required,

Obviously such fine definition would have to be deferred to

the actual cleanup effort; therefore, some limit to the required information
had to be determined, depending on many different aspects.

The overall

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