Norton Asks OMB for Help Funding Comprehensive WMD Investigation

More than 100 years after the end of World War I, WTOP has learned D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton is seeking funding from the Trump administration to investigate and clean up any remaining chemical weapons buried in Fort Totten Park in Northeast.  Almost five years after an empty World War I-era chemical weapon shell was discovered by the National Park Service [NPS] during construction of a trail through the park in July 2020, it’s still not clear whether Ft. Totten Park has additional munitions buried in the Ward 5 park, located near the Ft. Totten Metro station.  In 2022, WTOP reported the Ft. Totten discovery was a prequel to the decades-long Spring Valley cleanup at the former American University Experiment Station [AUES].  Once dubbed the “mother of all toxic dumps” — the site was used by the U.S. government for research and testing of chemical agents, equipment and munitions.  Since the 2020 discovery in Ft. Totten Park, WTOP has learned the munitions were likely trucked [pgs. 13 - 14] across town from one of the most wealthy neighborhoods in Ward 3, of Northwest D.C., to the less affluent Ward 5.  In a Jan. 31, 2025 letter to new Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum and Office of Management & Budget Acting Director Matthew Vaeth, Norton wrote, “I request that the budget include funding for the NPS, working together with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers [USACE], to conduct a comprehensive investigation of Ft. Totten Park.”  As recently as June 2024, USACE continued to find full or partial World War I-era munitions on the campus of American University, in a steep hillside on Rockwood Parkway Northwest, next to the former AU Public Safety Building, which was demolished in August 2017 ...

In a November 2023 announcement that a portion of Ft. Totten Park would remain closed and fenced, with cement barriers and “no trespassing” signs, the agencies suggested a more thorough investigation was appropriate, although funding was needed ... In her letter to the heads of Interior and OMB last week, Norton said, USACE “is currently remediating” the Spring Valley site.  “A similar investigation and cleanup are needed at Ft. Totten,” she wrote.  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 [pg. B-4] from Glenbrook Road was trucked to a landscaping project at Ft. Totten Metro station.  In November 2021, USACE said the cleanup at the Glenbrook Road site was completed, after it remediated, removed and recovered 556 munition items (23 of them filled with chemical agents), more than a ton of laboratory debris, 53 intact and sealed glass containers of chemical agents and 7,500 tons of contaminated soil.  However, chemical weapons from the former AUES site were later found in Ft. Totten.  In April 2023, WTOP reported two new metal canisters were discovered in another portion of the park: A 75 millimeter projectile, which contained only soil, and a Livens projectile which contained mostly water, but also a small amount of a commercial chemical that is not hazardous.
Neal Augenstein
WTOP News
February 3, 2025

Ft. Totten munitions found in 2020 (right) & 2023 (left)