The Sunriver Owners Association has been awarded nearly $500,000 from the federal government to offset asbestos cleanup costs during construction of the resort’s new aquatic center.

The owners association reached a $497,000 settlement with the government on Monday, after suing in mid-2010 over asbestos-contaminated waste believed to have been left at the site from a former army training facility located there.

Sunriver had asked for $3.2 million in its initial lawsuit. That was the price tag Department of Environmental Quality officials had put on cleanup efforts for the 6-acre parcel of contaminated land off of Beaver Drive in the small resort community.

But that cost was reduced when the cleanup became part of construction of an $18.9 million aquatic center on the site.

The asbestos threat was addressed during construction of the aquatic center by covering the contaminated area with 2 feet of clean soil and topping that with concrete, according to The Bulletin’s archives.

That was enough to keep asbestos fibers from reaching the surface and posing any harm to the public, a Department of Environmental Quality official told The Bulletin in 2011.

But Monday’s settlement will help the resort offset costs that Sunriver was still left on the hook for during cleanup, including soil replacement, said Bill Peck, general manager of the Sunriver Owners Association.

“DEQ was requiring us to clean this 6-acre parcel” of contaminated soil, Peck said. “We incorporated that into our (aquatic center) plan.”

Asbestos at the Sunriver site likely dates back to the 1940s. Years before the area was home to a resort, the U.S Army used it as a combat engineer training site called Camp Abbot.

That site was only used for two years before most of the structures were demolished or transferred elsewhere.

But asbestos from the buildings is believed to have leaked into the soil from loose materials during the camp’s existence and in the years after its closure. Asbestos was common in building materials like roof shingles and paint in the 1940s and 50s. It wasn’t until the 1970s that health threats from asbestos were first realized.

Sunriver officials first discovered asbestos at the site in 2002.

Peck said the settlement showed that the government owed Sunriver for the cleanup work the association did during construction of the aquatic center, which opened in May.

“We were very pleased with the results of the settlement,” Peck said. “The government accepted responsibility and facilitated a closure of this case quickly.”