skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Soldiers test gas masks at AUES “man-test” lab (NARA)
Entering the [World War I] fray two years after Germany sparked the chemical arms race with a surprise chlorine gas attack in Flanders, Belgium, the United States Army had neither gas masks nor protective gear, and no capacity for producing or deploying chemical weapons ... To correct those deficiencies, the War Department set up a laboratory, initially under the civilian Bureau of Mines, called the American University Experiment Station. It began modestly with one building and fewer than 100 researchers. By the war’s end, almost 2,000 soldiers, scientists and civilians worked at the campus, which soldiers called “Mustard Hill” for the blister agent sulfur mustard.
Test trenches were filled in & land sold to developers (NARA)
The army leased nearby farmland for proving grounds, part of which the soldiers named “Death Valley” ... When the war ended, the scientists revealed they had developed a new weapon called lewisite, an arsenic-based blister agent ... Over the decades, developers turned surrounding land into an affluent residential neighborhood, transforming “Death Valley” into Spring Valley, in the northern section of the District of Columbia. The WWI legacy was largely forgotten until 1993, when developers dug up a cache of mortars, triggering a state of emergency, evacuations and a lengthy cleanup. In all, 141 munitions were found at that site ...
Hundreds of munitions have been hauled away, most of them from a handful of burial pits. Arsenic has been the most widespread chemical contaminant — the army has carted off thousands of tons of tainted soil and replaced it with clean topsoil. Sulfur mustard, lewisite and other chemical warfare compounds — as well as traces of the constituent chemicals that remain after the warfare agents break down over time — have also been detected and removed. Concerns about the health effects of chemical contamination among Spring Valley’s roughly 25,000 residents have long lingered over the cleanup, especially after a lengthy neighborhood newspaper investigation reported unusual illnesses and health problems among residents.
Theo Emery
New York Times
November 11, 2018
The Army Corps of Engineers told the Restoration Advisory Board, which is composed largely of Spring Valley residents, it drafted a feasibility study for cleaning dangerous ground water. The World War I era poison gas experimental station polluted the water in Spring Valley and parts of American University's campus. Dan Noble, who heads the Corps' Spring Valley project, plans to present a detailed cleanup plan at the board's next meeting in November ... Twenty-six Spring Valley property owners are requesting their lots to be surveyed for dangerous chemicals and munitions as early as possible ... The Corps plans to obtain rights-of-entry from owners of the remaining 65 residential properties it plans to survey ... Noble warned residents and members of the public not to touch anything that could be an old munition. Today, 100 years after they were made, they are far more unpredictable if handled than they were a century ago ...
Noble mentioned the Corps cannot force homeowners to give permission to check out their properties. However, if there are grounds to believe something is dangerous, the Corps can ask the Environmental Protection Agency for permission ... Later this fall, the Corps intends to mail a brochure describing its plans and the history of the project to approximately 1,500 property owners and affected institutions such as American University and Sibley Hospital. American University will be in charge of distributing the brochures to its students and employees.
This fall, the Corps hopes to begin contaminated soil removal and restoration at the Spaulding-Captain Rankin Area [4710 Woodway Lane], adjacent to the southern end of American University. It also tentatively plans to remove any dangerous soil underneath the foundations of the university's former Public Safety Building, which was recently taken down ... Peter deFur, who announced he is retiring as a technical advisor to the cleanup project after 16 years with the board, said there was a "disposal area" for waste materials during World War I at one end of the former building.
Davis Kennedy
The Current
September 26, 2018 (pg. 1)
The Army Corps of Engineers has begun efforts to find and clean up potential explosive and chemical hazards on 91 privately owned Spring Valley properties that might be affected by contamination from World War I-era munitions activity ... The Spring Valley cleanup encompasses about 660 acres that were used by the federal government for research and testing of chemical agents, equipment and munitions. The project began in 1993, when a contractor unearthed buried ordnance. The Corps is currently focusing on those 91 private properties and 13 lots owned by the federal and District governments ...
Mary Bresnahan, a [Restoration Advisory Board] member and Long & Foster realtor, said some real estate agents simply refuse to deal with Spring Valley properties within the area of concern. When a realtor does show a property there, Bresnahan said there is a standard warning sheet that must be given to prospective buyers. Some buyers, she added, often get a property for considerably less than it would be worth in a nearby area. "I was shocked at a property, that was worth about $1.5 million that sold for $200,000 less," she said. In recent months, work crews have excavated arsenic contaminated saprolite from the lot at 4825 Glenbrook Road. That lot, owned by American University, was the site of last summer's worker exposure.
The remainder of the work at the site is governed by a plan requiring protective gear and air monitoring. Work will be performed only when the temperature is under 75 degrees and there will be no hand digging ... [Project manager Brenda] Barber said the Corps has excavated soil samples from 12 boreholes through the concrete slab under the foundation of American University's recently demolished Public Safety Building and nothing dangerous was found in the 79 samples. Once the gas utility line is rerouted, the concrete basement slab will be removed. The Corps hopes to remove any contaminated soil and backfill the area in December.
Davis Kennedy
Northwest Current
August 7, 2018
The U.S. Army resumed destroying obsolete chemical weapons at a Colorado depot after a nine-month shutdown for repairs, officials said Wednesday. The highly automated, $4.5 billion plant at the Pueblo Chemical Depot began a gradual restart this week. It could take 60 days to return to full operation, site manager Greg Mohrman said ... The plant is destroying 780,000 decades-old shells containing 2,500 U.S. tons (2,270 metric tons) of mustard agent. Although it’s often called a gas, the chemical is a liquid under most conditions ... The United States agreed to eliminate its mustard agent and all other chemical weapons under an international treaty. The Pueblo plant uses robots to disassemble the shells and water to neutralize the mustard agent. Microbes digest and convert the remaining chemicals, and the outcome is a dry “salt cake” that can be disposed of at a hazardous waste dump. The plant began operating in 2016 but has experienced a series of problems, including a leak in a storage tank, a tear in a spill-containment liner at another tank and vibration in pipes that threatened to damage pumps. Most operations stopped in September, after more than 43,000 shells had been eliminated ...
The Army is still working on a solution to a separate problem: rust and solids contaminating the mustard agent in some of the shells. The rust clogs pipes and strainers, and officials worry it will make it difficult for the robotic equipment to open the shells cleanly. Workers have to don protective suits and enter toxic areas to fix the equipment, increasing their risk of exposure. Officials said they expected some contamination but not as much as they found. The Army announced in March it wants to buy two closed detonation chambers, costing about $30 million each, to destroy 97,000 shells most likely to have excess rust and debris. Officials are preparing a required environmental study and would have to get state and county permits. Mohrman said the Army won’t make a final decision on the chambers until after the environmental study.
Dan Elliott
Associated Press
Crews working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have begun efforts in the field on the first properties identified for further investigation to mitigate potential unacceptable explosive hazards due to munitions and explosives of concern (MEC) that may remain within the Spring Valley Formerly Used Defense Site. This work will occur at 91 out of the ~1,600 Spring Valley properties and 12 government-owned lots. All property owners involved in this effort have been notified during the planning process for this effort ... The work at the properties, part of what is called the Site-Wide Remedial Action, involves working closely with property owners to coordinate for crews to map accessible portions of their lots for metallic anomalies buried underground. Crews are then using state-of-the-art Advanced Classification technology to locate and remove selected anomalies that are determined to resemble munitions. The work at all 91 properties and 12 government-owned lots is expected to take approximately three years to complete.
The Corps'pondent
June 2018: Vol. 19, No. 1
One of the many travesties in the failure to properly protect drinking water in the United States is EPA’s decades-long inability to set an enforceable drinking standard for perchlorate, a chemical that harms the thyroid – critical for normal growth and development – and that contaminates drinking water systems serving over 17 million people in the U.S. EPA determined back in 2011 that perchlorate meets the criteria for regulation as a contaminant under the Safe Drinking Water Act ... Unfortunately, EPA has long been under strong pressure from industry and the Pentagon and its contractors to avoid setting a strong drinking water standard for perchlorate (DOD is a major source of perchlorate pollution due to its use in rocket fuel and munitions at its facilities across the country). We sued the Agency in 2016 to set a health-protective drinking water limit for this toxic chemical. Now, the final peer review report from an expert panel has concluded that EPA should proceed to set a health-protective drinking water standard for perchlorate, even while expressing some concerns that EPA’s approach may still be underestimating the health risks posed by drinking perchlorate (see Final Peer Review report March 2018) ...
According to a 2010 GAO report, “Perchlorate has been found in water and other media at varying levels in 45 states, as well as in the food supply, and comes from a variety of sources.” EPA reported that approximately 160 public water supplies tested – serving over 17 million people – had perchlorate at 4 ppb (the lowest level that was looked for) or higher (73 Federal Register 60262, 60270 October 10, 2008). FDA measured perchlorate in over half of food samples it analyzed, including baby foods and infant formula. Perchlorate is also in human breast milk (see Kirk et al 2007 and Pearce et al 2007) ... Consumers need reliable information about the health concerns associated with perchlorate, what routes of exposure are of greatest concern, and how to respond to violations in the drinking water standard when they may occur ... After decades of accumulated science on perchlorate’s health harms, and with years of opportunity for public and industry input and comment, it is past time for EPA to protect people’s health by preventing harmful exposure to perchlorate in drinking water.
Jennifer Sass
NRDC
Allen Hengst: I have two quick questions about the Groundwater Feasibility Study [stemming] from this sentence in the December Partnering meeting minutes: "USACE Baltimore has been instructed by Headquarters to redraft the Groundwater FS to include ‘Monitored Natural Attenuation’ (MNA) as an alternative" ... [At the January] RAB meeting, I asked if you had changed the Groundwater FS to address objections by the partners and you said you had added an alternative. Is this the alternative that you are talking about: "Monitored Natural Attenuation"?
Dan Noble confirmed this.
Hengst: The second question is, assuming you still have Land Use Controls (LUCs) as an alternative, how is MNA different from LUCs?
Steve Hirsh explained that what is needed is some physical or chemical process that will eventually remediate the groundwater to the point where it could be used as drinking water. With LUCs, there is no physical or chemical process specified that would degrade the contaminant. If MNA were selected, the contaminant would be monitored over time to see if the concentration of contaminant is declining. If the contaminant is not declining, then at some point – usually every 5 years – a decision would be made whether to try a different approach.
Hengst: ... Are the Partners going to accept MNA?
S. Hirsh explained that he had not seen the Groundwater FS yet. USACE has evaluated the alternatives but has not made a recommendation.
Almost 100 of D.C.’s most expensive homes will soon be screened for remnants of chemical weapons which were test-fired during World War I, WTOP has learned. Letters have been sent to 91 homeowners in the Spring Valley neighborhood, providing details of how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will inspect their properties, as part of the decades-long cleanup of the World War I chemical weapons testing site on the grounds of American University. During World War I, about 661 acres in the Northwest section of D.C. were used by the U.S. government for research and testing of chemical agents, equipment and munitions ... Now, the Corps is finalizing plans to screen almost 100 multimillion-dollar homes in an approximately half-mile swath that were within firing range during World War I, as well as homes near a possible disposal area ...
The Spring Valley cleanup project began in 1993, when a contractor unearthed buried military ordnance on 52nd Court Northwest. Recently, the cleanup has focused on the property at 4825 Glenbrook Rd. Northwest. A home that had been built on the site was removed in 2012. Digging is temporarily halted at the site after seven workers were sickened and temporarily hospitalized in August 2017. Work on the Glenbrook Road site has included labor-intensive hand-digging. Workers discovered low levels of Mustard and Lewisite, colorless and odorless compounds, which can cause blistering and lung irritation ...
Participation in the screening of the 91 properties is not mandatory. Homeowners will need to sign permission to allow the government to come onto the property ... Following removal of any remnants, and subsequent testing, the Corps will restore the home’s property to how it was before the screening. Each property will take about 15 days. If a property is surveyed, and select anomalies removed, the homeowner will receive a closure letter, which can be shared with a realtor or prospective buyer. The project’s remedial action phase is expected to start in the next few months, and will take about three years to complete.
Neal Augenstein
WTOP News
March 9, 2018
Dan Noble: USACE Baltimore continues to monitor the disagreement between USACE HQ, the EPA and the DC Department of Energy & Environment (DOEE), and will update the RAB as a future agenda topic. USACE Baltimore also continues to address the comments received from the regulators on the draft Groundwater Feasibility Study. Once the comments have been addressed and the Groundwater FS has been finalized, the next step in the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) process is the Groundwater Proposed Plan (PP) ... The first step in the process is to get to the point where USACE Baltimore can finalize the Groundwater FS with DOEE and EPA. USACE Baltimore continues to work on that and expects, hopefully, by the end of January or early February to have a new submission of the Groundwater FS back to DOEE and EPA.
Allen Hengst: So you are changing the Groundwater FS in response to objections?
Noble explained that USACE is adding an alternative to the various alternatives listed in the Groundwater FS.
Spring Valley FUDS
RAB Meeting Minutes
January 9, 2018 (pg.6)
USACE Baltimore provided a brief update on the status of the Groundwater FS … USACE Baltimore knows that EPA has a different opinion of whether there is a need to restore the groundwater or not. The response given to EPA was that the CERCLA requires USACE to be protective of human health and the environment and that land use controls do that task. EPA does not agree with that. That is a fundamental difference of opinion. EPA will also still have questions about or perhaps not agree with the premise* that perchlorate cannot be treated because of the arsenic. EPA does not necessarily agree that is the case. EPA Region III believed the arsenic in this case is a minor issue. The arsenic level hovers around the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL), and is likely not a plume.
Spring Valley FUDS
Partnering Meeting Minutes
August 3, 2017 (pgs. 8 - 9)
* Perchlorate can be remediated in-situ through inducing reducing conditions, and there are certain microorganisms that will degrade perchlorate. For arsenic, oxidizing conditions are preferred; not reducing conditions. When reducing conditions are present at sites such as landfills, where organics are released and cause reduction, arsenic is frequently mobilized. This presents a quandary for developing an in-situ treatment for perchlorate that is compatible with arsenic.
Spring Valley FUDS
Partnering Meeting Minutes
April 20, 2017 (pg. 15)
Free Hit Counter
