Neglected Photo Analysis Put Sgt. Maurer Pit on University Grounds

The Spring Valley partners and the Restoration Advisory Board have failed to act on many of these critical issues, which could cause the cleanup to drag on even longer. My main concern with the Army Corps’ “proposed plan” for 4825 Glenbrook Road is that there is no contingency for cleaning up adjacent properties ...

The Spring Valley partners failed to follow through on various commitments. For example, in 2001 the partners agreed to conduct indoor air monitoring at 4825 Glenbrook Road and five other properties to determine what chemical vapors were migrating from the soil into the house [pg. 2 of 6/24/02 Partnering Mtg. minutes] ... Eleven years later, this still has not been conducted at 4825 Glenbrook Road.Advisory neighborhood commissioners do not need advanced technical expertise to make informed decisions on these issues. There are many experts who can explain the issues in ways that anyone can understand. Examples include the Restoration Advisory Board’s technical expert, Dr. Peter deFurr, who compiled a list of the chemicals detected at 4825 Glenbrook Road; American University’s public health consultant, Dr. Paul Chrostowski, who asked the Army Corps to clean up the Glenbrook Road site to a stricter standard given the number of toxic chemicals detected on the site; and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Terry Slonecker, who identified the possible burial pit locations on the university campus.

Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3D needs to practice due diligence to make sure that a thorough investigation and cleanup of the Glenbrook Road properties is conducted. We need more oversight, not less.
Kent Slowinski, ANC-3D
Northwest Current Viewpoint
January 11, 2012 (pg. 9)

Figure 10: Intersection of six circles denotes location of 1918 pit

UPDATED RANKINGS OF POSSIBLE SITES: Findings from the previous report, Terrestrial Photogrammetry of a 1918 Ground Photograph: Analysis of Three Potential 1918 Disposal Sites, Lockheed Martin, Las Vegas, NV August 2000, indicated that Site 2 was the most likely location of the burial pit, and sites 1 and 3 were ranked the next likely sites, in that order of likelihood. Site 3 was placed last because the resolution in a 1918 aerial photomosaic provided was so poor that the outline of buildings could not be discerned, providing insufficient evidence to support a higher ranking.

Sgt. Maurer pit likely south of Army trailers above

In the process of determining the new coordinates for the three possible sites, a geographically-corrected map of the 1918 building locations and a much higher-resolution version of the photomosaic were acquired which showed the area in the vicinity of the burial site very clearly ... Figure 10 depicts the intersection of six circles that denotes location of 1918 pit for possible site 3 ... Coordinates of the site 3 1918 pit are: 773,328.3 feet in x; 401,185.8 feet in y (Maryland State Plane Coordinate System, NAD 1927).
E. T. Slonecker
Coordinate Computation of Ordnance Burial Site
December 2000 (pgs. 4 & 6)

Likely location of pit is to the left (south) of trailers