Environmental Group Leads Toxic Tours of Former WW I Army Base

AUES Spring Valley tours provide context to better understand the issues surrounding the cleanup of this Formerly Used Defense Site. Tours focus on historical features of the American University Experiment Station, the current Army Corps of Engineers cleanup operations and residents’ health problems. Tours are led by a former Restoration Advisory Board member and Spring Valley resident. Each tour takes approximately 1½ hours.  Participants see where testing occurred during World War I and where chemical warfare materiel is being removed today. For more information contact ahengst@verizon.net.

Army Seeks to ID Unknown Liquid in WWI Munition at Fort Totten

The U.S. Army is still trying to identify an unknown liquid found inside one of two World War I-era weapons that were discovered three weeks ago, in Ft. Totten Park, in Northeast D.C., and whether there’s a connection to the chemical weapons found during the decadeslong cleanup of a former chemical weapons site near the American University campus.  U.S. Army Corps of Engineers [USACE] spokeswoman Cynthia Mitchell told WTOP a 75 mm shell discovered in mound of soil by a National Park Service [NPS] employee was empty, after analysis at Marine Corps Base Quantico.  However, “the 6-inch Livens projectile has a liquid fill that will require further analysis,” Mitchell said.  A Livens Projector was a simple mortar-like weapon that could throw large drums filled with toxic or flammable chemicals.  The weapons were used during World War I, specifically between 1916 through 1918.  Livens projectors were encountered often during the Ward 3 Spring Valley cleanup, at the former American University Experiment Station [AUES] used by the U.S. government for research and testing of chemical agents, equipment and munitions — once dubbed the “mother of all toxic dumps” ... Mitchell said the Army is “still analyzing its options for obtaining additional characterization data on the liquid fill within the Livens.  That action is complicated by the experimental nature of the work conducted in the 1920s by American University.”  

Soldiers load battery of Livens gas projectors (Wikimedia)

The temporary lack of clarity of whether the liquid poses a potential health or safety risk is pausing discussions of whether a major cleanup might be required in the park, located in a Ward 5 neighborhood, near the Ft. Totten Metro.  However, USACE has taken preliminary steps to facilitate additional cleanup, by installing erosion control matting.  “This matting provides stabilization of the site, protecting the berms against erosion and rainfall.”  “Fencing will also be installed this week and will remain in place during ongoing assessments which will help determine a path forward at Ft. Totten Park,” according to a USACE statement ... The possible link to Ft. Totten may have occurred years before the start of the Spring Valley cleanup.  Even before a contractor digging a utility trench in Spring Valley in 1993 uncovered a buried military ordnance, which prompted the USACE investigation that revealed homes on Glenbrook Road were built atop chemical weapon burial pits, contaminated soil from Glenbrook Road was trucked to a landscaping project at Ft. Totten Metro station.  Dan Noble, of USACE, and project manager for the ongoing Spring Valley Formerly Used Defense Site project told WTOP in a 2022 interview.

 

“What we know is that over at Ft. Totten, where the D.C. Metro project was underway, they had a need for soil, and on Glenbrook Road, where they were building the houses, they had excess soil,” Noble said.  “We know that an arrangement was made to transfer some soil, from Glenbrook Road, over to Ft. Totten.”  In 1992, the heavy equipment operator spreading Glenbrook Road soil at the Ft. Totten Metro site felt sickened from the fumes of the soil, and NPS ordered it be removed, Noble told the Spring Valley Restoration Advisory Board [pgs. 13 - 14].  The board holds regular meetings to advise community members on the cleanup ... D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and ANC commissioners Zachary Ammerman and Gordon-Andrew Fletcher have been calling on the NPS to more fully search the Ward 5 park, to investigate a possible link to the Spring Valley cleanup of chemical weapons.  On Wednesday, Norton issued a follow-up letter to the NPS and USACE, seeking a thorough search throughout the park for other weapons, and soil and groundwater contamination.  “Given the fact that multiple munitions have been found over the years in different areas of Ft. Totten Park, I, once again, ask that you investigate ordnances and soil and groundwater contamination throughout the park,” wrote Norton.

Neal Augenstein

WTOP News

May 12, 2023