Army Conducts Shelter-in-Place Alert System Test on Wednesday

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will soon be testing its “shelter-in-place” alert system before starting work to dig up the third and final portion of 4825 Glenbrook Road NW, where the Army anticipates a “high probability” of finding dangerous World War I-era chemical contamination.  During the war the Army operated a munitions testing station at American University, and buried leftover materials in the surrounding area.  Most of the contamination has been cleaned up in recent years for $250 million.  At 4825 Glenbrook in Spring Valley, where the Army tore down a house to conduct its investigation, workers are operating under a protective tent due to the level of contamination expected there ... 

As before, if toxic fumes escape from the tent, an alert system will contact neighbors asking them to shelter in place until further notice.  Re-training about the shelter-in-place program will be available for residents of seven nearby homes and users of American University’s Watkins Building ...  Excavation of the riskiest areas at 4825 Glenbrook is expected to last through late 2016 or early 2017, followed by investigation of “low-probability” spots where the Army doesn’t expect to find contamination.   The property will then be restored to residential standards in spring and summer 2017.
Northwest Current
January 27, 2016
 

Three CAFS units (left) were activated on February 3 (USACE)

This week concluded with all snow at the site either removed or melted, and any storm damage repairs completed. The on-site team continues with preparing the site for high probability operations to begin in about 2 weeks, sometime during the week of February 15th. The Chemical Agent Filtration System (CAFS) units, with all new filters, were activated on Wednesday so that they will be ready to perform for next week's smoke test ... Next week we will begin several days of refresher training, conduct the smoke test, and complete the installation and testing of the Shelter-in-Place system sirens.  We will be briefly testing the Shelter-in-Place sirens on Monday, Feb 8th throughout the day.  We will then perform a complete Shelter-in-Place alert system test, including the ring-down and email alerts, on Wednesday, Feb 10th at 4:05pm.
Weekly Update
4825 Glenbrook Road
February 5, 2016

Shelter-in-Place zone during Tent 3 work (pg. 41)

Site-Wide Feasibility Study Favors 'Alternative 6' to Clear Munitions

Unacceptable chemical risks in soil from AUES activities

The draft-final Feasibility Study (FS) was sent to our regulatory partners (EPA and DDOE) and Dr. Peter deFur, our independent Technical Assistance for Public Participation Program (TAPP) consultant for review ... The purpose of the FS is to develop, screen, and evaluate alternatives to achieve possible remedial action objectives addressing any unacceptable human health risks in or potential unacceptable explosive hazards identified in the Final Remedial Investigation Report ... As a reminder, the locations, referred to as exposure units (EU), where unacceptable human health risks in soil were identified are the Spaulding Captain Rankin Area (SCRA), and Southern American University (AU).  The areas associated with unacceptable explosive hazards include impact areas, static test fire areas and possible munition disposal pits.  The areas cover about 100 properties in the neighborhood.

Areas with unacceptable explosive hazards

The below chart (Table 5.2 from the draft Site-Wide Feasibility Study) shows the remediation alternatives that were analyzed against the EPA’s nine screening criterion established to address CERCLA requirements and technical and policy considerations ... Alternative 6 was determined to be the most favorable alternative to achieve the Remedial Action Objectives (RAOs).  It is protective of human health and the environment, is compliant with "applicable or relevant and appropriate requirements" and will meet the RAOs in the shortest amount of time.  However, the formal selection of the preferred alternative will be proposed and documented in the Proposed Plan, and subject to acceptance from our regulatory partners and the community.
The Corps'pondent
January 2016 (pg. 3)

Chemical Cleanup on Glenbrook Road will Resume in February

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to resume removing  World War I-era debris from Spring Valley in February, upon moving a protective tent at 4825 Glenbrook Road NW to its third and final location.  The tent will be moved at the Glenbrook site above the former basement of the home that once stood there.  The Army previously demolished that home after the site was found to be contaminated by the munitions testing station formerly located on the land of present-day American University.  The Army has suspended its “shelter in place” emergency response program until the tent is moved, but the program will be tested about 30 days before the work resumes.
Northwest Current

December 23, 2015 (pg. 2) 

Efforts in early December focused on preparing the site and relocating support equipment, as we incrementally arrange the tent at its third and final location ... In mid-December, the crews leveled the driveway and placed the first section of the tent into its final position.  Additionally, crews constructed a pad area where the medical monitoring tent, one of the site's multiple layers of safety protocols, was placed behind Tent 3.  In January, the team will resume using the crane to move the final two sections of the tent into their final locations so the entire Engineering Control Structure (ECS) can be reassembled ... We will notify everyone prior to reinstating the Shelter-in-Place program, and will share further details when we have a firm date for the start of that next phase of high probability operations.

Spring Valley FUDS

Monthly Project Update

December 2015

Third tent move at 4825 Glenbrook Road

Corps Pursues "PRP" Investigation to Recoup Added Cleanup Costs

Brenda Barber, Spring Valley Project Manager: USACE is conducting an investigation regarding the post-AUES development of three properties within the Spring Valley FUDS, focusing on 4825 Glenbrook Road, 4835 Glenbrook Road, and the Public Safety Building at 4400 Massachusetts Avenue on AU’s campus.  The purpose is to identify additional potentially responsible parties (PRP) for the presence and/or extent of contamination at these sites ... Anyone who has information about this matter is encouraged to contact USACE’s PRP investigation contractor: Watermark, Inc.  Contact information and brief details can be left on the contractor’s toll free phone number (866-383-7327) and James Carney will return the call to conduct a comprehensive interview.

 

  PRP targets Glenbrook Road & Public Safety bldgs.

Linda Argo, AU Representative clarified that, to her knowledge, AU does not know which fraternity constructed the Public Safety Building ...

The ultimate purpose of the PRP search is to determine whether any of the property developers and/or their subcontractors possessed any knowledge of the contamination at the site, and whether they exacerbated the extent of contamination during their activities, thus requiring the USACE to conduct larger remedial efforts than would have been necessary had the contamination remained undisturbed ... If the developer is identified as a PRP, then USACE may be able to recoup some of the remediation costs from the developer ...

Dan Noble, Spring Valley Project Manager explained that the Spring Valley FUDS cleanup is governed by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), which includes a liability framework for determining a wide range of parties that are potentially liable for site contamination.  The USACE is a PRP for the Spring Valley FUDS and has spent significant time and funding on site cleanup.  D. Noble further explained that as soon as USACE has spent cleanup funding at the site, they are permitted to pursue other PRPs for the purpose of sharing cleanup costs.
Spring Valley FUDS 
RAB Meeting Minutes
January 8, 2013 (pgs. 12 - 14)

Army unearthed this 75mm shell under PSB

The Army Corps of Engineers unearthed more munitions debris next to the Public Safety building during this winter break.  On Jan. 4, workers found a single 75mm round buried four feet underneath a concrete slab that they had removed in front of the building’s lower entrance ... Although heavily corroded and empty, the projectile was still largely intact ... Kent Slowinski, a community activist and former Restoration Advisory Board member, said recent work conducted by the Army Corps indicates a likelihood that the debris field around the Public Safety building extends underneath the building, because debris from the AU Experimental Station has been found behind and in front of it.
Christopher Cottrell
The Eagle
January 21, 2010

 Shell found beneath slab 4 ft. under lower entrance

Case Study: Army-EPA Standoff over FUDS Perchlorate Cleanup

 VOCs & perchlorate at Longhorn FUDS (Feb. 2009)

Karnack, TX — No end is in sight in a dispute between the U.S. Army and Environmental Protection Agency over cleanup at the former Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant at Caddo Lake.  The Caddo Lake Clearinghouse — which consists of groups that advocate for the lake — heard during a meeting this week that the dispute over the former ammo plant site boils down to an argument about how well the groundwater must be cleaned up ... "We've been waiting for a couple of years at least (to get the groundwater cleaned).  Neither the Army nor the EPA can tell us when it's going to end," [chair of the Restoration Advisory Board Paul] Fortune said ... Hydrologist George Rice, during his presentation at the Thursday meeting, said perchlorate has been identified as the groundwater contaminant ... Rice said: "Last year, the EPA said the perchlorate standard would be out this year … The Army agrees that whatever the drinking water standard is, that will become the cleanup standard."
Caleb Brabham
Longview News-Journal
October 16, 2015

Location of LHAAP in central-east Texas

Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant (LHAAP) is a former, government-owned, contractor-operated and maintained Department of Defense facility located in central-east Texas in the northeastern corner of Harrison County.  The footprint of the former U.S. Army installation occupies 8,416 acres between State Highway 43 at Karnack, Texas, and the southwestern shore of Caddo Lake ... Studies conducted at LHAAP identified contaminants such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), perchlorate, metals and explosives in on-site soil and groundwater.  These areas of contamination are subject to investigation and cleanup under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).

Background

LHAAP FUDS

 

 Groundwater treatment plant at LHAAP

[Public participant William] Echols asked again why EPA wants residential standards applied when the land will never be used as residential.  [EPA Region 6 representative Steve] Tzhone answered that EPA has a policy to restore groundwater to its highest beneficial use ... Mr. Tzhone stated that this is a national policy and the intent is for the policy to be applied across the board to all states ... [Public participant Lee] Eisenberg said that, with water resources being scarce, it’s probably only a matter of time before there is a need to use this water ... [EPA Region 6 representative Steve] Mayer commented that EPA is working on development of a perchlorate standard, and has been working on it for many years.  Although the first proposed perchlorate MCL of 15 μg/L was withdrawn due to lack of scientific basis, a new proposed perchlorate standard is anticipated next year. 
LHAAP FUDS
RAB Minutes
November 20, 2014 (pgs. 8 - 10)

The Corps of Engineers is conducting an investigation to determine to what extent American University Experiment Station-related activities may have impacted the groundwater within the Formerly Used Defense Site.  The investigation involves the installation of monitoring wells and the collection of samples from the wells and additional surface water locations.  To date, the Corps of Engineers has installed 53 wells and collected a number of surface water samples.  Perchlorate has been detected at levels above the EPA interim drinking water health advisory of 15 parts per billion (ppb) at two locations in the project area, with a highest detection level of 146 ppb identified on American University’s campus [and the other in front of 4820 Glenbrook Road].  Groundwater is not used as a drinking water source in Spring Valley.

Spring Valley FUDS

Project Efforts: Site-Wide

USACE Website

Who Could Forget When Chemical Weapons Were Tested in D.C.?

Col. Smith S. Leach was a West Point grad (class of 1875) who worked on river and harbor improvements around the country, prepared “The Engineer’s Field Manual” for the Army and was in charge of the District’s water supply.  He died in 1909 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.  Nine years later, the Army decided to rename one of Washington’s newest military installations in his honor.  Camp Leach had formerly — and briefly — been known as American University Camp, for that was where it was located: on 650 acres of land donated by the college in Spring Valley in Northwest Washington ... During World War I, the Army created and tested chemical weapons at Camp Leach and at a contiguous facility called the American University Experiment Station ... Eventually, the Army’s Chemical Warfare Service took over.  Engineers performed gas-mask research, investigated offensive and defensive chemicals, and developed smoke mixtures for Navy smoke screens and Army battlefield signaling.  

Trench training at Camp Leach (LOC)

Hundreds of different gases were tested in Spring Valley, including mustard gas, phosgene and ammonium cyanide ... The war ended on Nov. 11, 1918.  The Army moved out of Spring Valley in 1921.  Somehow, people forgot what had gone on there.  They were reminded on Jan. 6, 1993, when a contractor digging a utility trench on 52nd Court NW noticed something odd in the bucketful of dirt his backhoe had just unearthed: a canister that made “a sloshing sound.”  Ruh-roh.  Ever since then, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has overseen a cleanup in what is now one of Washington’s toniest neighborhoods.  About $260 million has been spent so far, said Dan Noble, project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Baltimore District. Work is expected to be finished around 2020.  It doesn’t sound as if the War to End All Wars is quite over.
John Kelly
Washington Post
September 5, 2015

Spring Valley Environmental Writer Janet Bohlen Dies at Home at 86

Janet T. Bohlen, 86, an environmental writer, conservationist and former communications director for the World Wildlife Fund, died Aug. 3 at her home in Lexington, Mass.  The cause was complications from lymphoma, said her husband, Curtis Bohlen.  The Bohlens moved to Lexington from the District in 2013.  Mrs. Bohlen was born Janet Trowbridge in New York and grew up in Washington.  In the late 1980s, she was communications director for the World Wildlife Fund.  She also worked for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  Among her books was For the Wild Places: Profiles in Conservation (1993), about five leaders in conservation biology.  As a young woman, she worked for the CIA in Norway and later accompanied her husband on Foreign Service assignments in Afghanistan and Egypt.
Washington Post 
September 4, 2015

 

 For the Wild Places

Janet Bohlen inspects a faded 1918 photo of a dozen Army soldiers standing shoulder-deep in rugged trenches.  The uniformed men aim their rifles at an unseen target behind American University.  “It looks like they’re right on the playing field, doesn’t it?” she says, sitting in her living room.  “Wouldn’t you love to be able to identify exactly where that is now?”  From the other side of her coffee table, her husband, Buff, quips, “Don’t you recognize your own back yard?”  The Bohlens have lived in the Spring Valley section of Northwest Washington for 52 years, raising three children and now settling into retirement ... 

 

Janet Bohlen points to where munition was found.

In the early 2000s, the Army Corps found the vestiges of a shed once filled with detonators under a 70-year-old tree in the Bohlens’ back yard, where Janet Bohlen said her daughter and neighborhood children would often play.  Her daughter had severe mercury poisoning years before the discoveries, but Janet said there is no way for her family to know whether the Army artifacts and that condition were related.  Janet has been treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a condition the 2007 study recognized as potentially arsenic-related.
Sylvia Carignan
Washington Post
December 11, 2011