Public Hearings Cast Doubt on FUDS Cleanup Timetable

At a public roundtable Monday before the DC Council’s Committee on Government Operations and the Environment ... Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh, who chairs the committee, and several community members said they worry the Army will again depart Spring Valley before all the munitions and chemicals are found and removed. In 1995, the Army decided no more work was necessary and left the neighborhood, only to return after the DC Department of Health conducted an independent investigation and found evidence of arsenic and munitions. “There are growing concerns that the Corps will leave before the job is done, just like it did before,” said Tom Smith, a Spring Valley advisory neighborhood commissioner
Northwest Current
May 13, 2009 (pg. 1)

Spring Valley cleanup project managers face grilling

At the request of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, the Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Issues and the District of Columbia will hold a hearing on Wednesday, June 10, Rayburn House Office Building in room 2154 at 2pm, on the proposal of the Army Corps of Engineers to conclude its cleanup of chemical weapons, unexploded ordinances and other chemicals in Spring Valley, a Formerly Used Defense Site in Northwest, a neighborhood in the District ... "No information has been submitted to the public or Congress concerning how the Corps has ascertained that the entire site is clear, safe, and without residual health effects," Norton said.

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton
Press Release ~ (June 3, 2009)

Munition Destruction System Will Use Toxic Chemicals to Neutralize Warfare Agents

Explosive Destruction System (EDS)

Sometime in May 2009, the Army Corps of Engineers plans to destroy World War I chemical munitions in Spring Valley, a nice neighborhood and Formerly Used Defense Site in Northwest Washington, DC ... The Army Corps plans to use the Explosive Destruction System or EDS to destroy recovered chemical munitions. The EDS requires large quantities of toxic chemicals to be trucked into the neighborhood to neutralize the chemical warfare agents. Some of the chemicals are as toxic as the chemical warfare agents they neutralize. The EDS also generates a hazardous waste stream (250 - 400 gallons per munition) which must be trucked to a hazardous waste incinerator.

Kent Slowinski
Former member Spring Valley Restoration Advisory Board