AUGUSTA (AP) – Maine environmental regulators know a lot about past contamination and cleanup efforts at the Brunswick Naval Air Station but more questions must be answered before the base changes hands, they say.

The Brunswick Local Redevelopment Authority was provided with a list of more than two dozen contaminated or possibly contaminated sites during the first monthly meeting between its members and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

“We’ve been working since 1987. There’s a lot known about these sites. We have volumes and volumes of information,” said Claudia Sait, a project manager with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

These include landfills, ordnance disposal areas, gas stations, former pesticides buildings, weapons storage areas and contaminated groundwater.

But there are still sites that have not been studied, and much is unknown about past uses of the property that might have polluted the land or groundwater, she said.

Before it can plan for the future, the Local Redevelopment Authority needs to know about environmental hazards so it can address them during negotiations for the property transfer after the base closes in 2011, according to the LRA members and DEP officials.

At Brunswick Naval Air Station, the military had spent $60.4 million through fiscal year 2004 to clean up contaminated sites. The estimated cost to complete the cleanup is $13.6 million, according to Defense Department data.

Under federal law, the Defense Department is generally required to clean up closed bases prior to transfer to a redevelopment authority.

But federal, state and local officials expect the military to push for more early transfers that would require the private sector to complete the cleanup.

At this stage, the LRA is still trying to understand the environmental status of the base and the rules regarding the cleanup.

“It’s early on in the process, and we’re still a little bit in the dark,” said Marty Wilk, chairman of the LRA. “We know the environmental issues exist. It’s just a question of how we deal with it.”

But the emphasis on early “dirty” transfers, might not be a bad thing for the local interests, said Mathew Eddy, Brunswick’s director of economic development and current director of the Local Redevelopment Authority.

Local officials and the private sector would likely be able to clean up the site faster and better than the Navy, Eddy said.