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The Spring Valley Restoration Advisory Board this month heard about the stricter standards the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is reportedly developing to measure safe levels of arsenic in soil and drinking water. Changes would mean that all the figures the Army Corps has used to determine soil safety in its Spring Valley cleanup "could be thrown out," board member Lee Monsein said at the board's June 12 meeting.
The Army Corps has been working to cleanup chemical and explosive munitions and related debris from the Spring Valley area since 1993. During World War I, the Army used American University as a testing site, firing weapons into the then-undeveloped woods around campus.
Nan Wells, an advisory neighborhood commissioner for the area, asked if the Army would have to clean up additional areas when the environmental agency sets new safety standards. The Army's Dan Noble, who co-chairs the advisory board, responded: "We are never going to walk away from a FUDS [Formerly Used Defense Site] site."Northwest Current
June 27, 2012 ( pg. 5)
Multi-port deep well across street from Pit 3
Todd Beckwith (Project Manager): We collected two samples from this well. We did an initial sample in March and we went back out in April and collected another set of samples. So everything here highlighted in yellow represents chemistry results that were above the drinking water criteria. For both perchlorate and arsenic in these deeper intervals we're seeing some elevated concentrations ... The arsenic results were a little bit surprising. Back in 2005 - 2006 we had exceeded the MCL [maximum contaminant level] -- the 10 ppb standard -- just barely.
It was 10.5 then and since that time all of our sampling results for arsenic across all of Spring Valley have all been below 10 ppb, so we're a little surprised to see these concentrations ... We're going to go out and do some purging of this well; we'll pump a lot of water out of each one of those depth intervals. After we've done that, we'll collect a sample to make sure that the sample we send to the lab is truly representative of what's in that formation and the chemistry that we're seeing there hasn't been influenced by well construction activity.
Spring Valley FUDS
RAB Meeting Minutes
June 12, 2012
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The Spring Valley Restoration Advisory Board this month heard about the stricter standards the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is reportedly developing to measure safe levels of arsenic in soil and drinking water. Changes would mean that all the figures the Army Corps has used to determine soil safety in its Spring Valley cleanup "could be thrown out," board member Lee Monsein said at the board's June 12 meeting.
