AU President Moving In Next Door to "High Probability" Dig

"Pit 3" is within 96 feet of 4835 Glenbrook Road on right

President Neil Kerwin and his wife are in the process of moving back into their 4835 Glenbrook Rd. home, AU’s Director of Community and Local Government Relations Penny Pagano said during a Spring Valley Restoration Advisory Board meeting Tuesday night. The move comes despite an ongoing “high priority” investigation for chemical munitions next door at the Army Corps of Engineers’ “Pit 3” dig ... Because the President’s house lies within the Corps’ established 96-foot safety boundary, anyone staying there will have to be familiar with the Corps’ [shelter-in-place] “public protection plan.” The President’s house is the only structure within the 96-foot circle, said USACE Military Response Program Manager Dan Noble.
Christopher Cottrell
The Eagle ~ October 14, 2009

Workers prepare home in shadow of "Pit 3" investigation

Army Will Reveal List of Recovered Munitions Next Month

Col. David Anderson, Army Corps' Baltimore District

In fulfillment of promises made at a June 10 Congressional oversight hearing, "the Army has lifted a security order concealing a list of World War I-era munitions uncovered in Washington's Spring Valley neighborhood. At a community meeting Tuesday, officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the list of recovered munitions would be made public next month. D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton brought officials to update residents on the cleanup of chemical munitions from an American University experiment station during World War I. Col. David Anderson, commander of the Army Corps' Baltimore district, says they are still concerned about security but want to be more transparent."
Washington Examiner ~ October 6, 2009

Washington Post Video Offers Glimpse of Geophysical Survey

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been scouring the community and removing munitions and fragments on and off since the 1990s ... Now geophysicists hired by the corps are in Dalecarlia Woods studying the far end of a firing range "fan" that runs 1,550 yards northwest from Herzstein's driveway. There, in the closing months of World War I, the Army fenced in a site where it tested an array of mortars designed to fire chemical weapons, officials said ... The search was recently extended to Dalecarlia Woods, near the Dalecarlia Reservoir, which supplies water to more than a million people in the region.
Washington Post
October 6, 2009: pg B-1

Student Newspaper Knocks University's Lack of Transparency

For 16 years, the university and the Army Corps have been digging for World War I-era munitions. The backstory is that this campus was a serious chemical warfare research center from 1917 to 1918 ... Every student at this university should be aware of these issues. Every AU applicant should, too. The university should open its archives and provide students with more information. Transparency must be more than a buzzword considering the severity of chemical hazards on our campus. Students should be skeptical of the notion that AU is doing all that it could be doing.
The Eagle
September 28, 2009

Sunday Walk Revisits Scene of 1918 Chemical Weapons Testing

 Lot 18 excavation behind homes on Rockwood Parkway

"The purpose of the tour is to encourage more historical research, investigation and cleanup here," said Kent Slowinski, who led more than a dozen people on the walk ... Aaron Lloyd, 38, grew up in Spring Valley. Less than a decade ago, his stepfather found munitions buried in the back yard of the home where Lloyd grew up and where his mother had kept a garden. "It's very disturbing," he said. "Someone had to have known about these chemical weapons before 1993." Nan Wells, an advisory neighborhood commissioner from Spring Valley, said she hopes that the tour will help engage the public ... She also hopes that the Army Corps of Engineers, which along with the D.C. Department of the Environment is overseeing the cleanup and destruction of the munitions, will continue to fund the project. For fiscal 2010, the Corps has allotted $11 million to the cleanup effort. The number drops to $3 million in fiscal 2011 and $500,000 the following fiscal year.
Yamiche Alcindor
Washington Post
September 21, 2009 (pg. B-1)

Nan S. Wells, ANC Commissioner 3D03

During the tour, EcoSense members heard details about the Spring Valley FUDS - one of more than 5,000 contaminated sites in the United States once used by the military that require cleanup. The Spring Valley FUDS holds the unique distinction of being the only site with both chemical warfare agents and munitions in a residential neighborhood and on a university campus ... Kristin Kozlowski, a graduate student in AU's Public Anthropology program, said the information came as a surprise. "It's pretty shocking. I didn't know any of this previously," she said. "I hadn't seen this in any literature from campus or anything." 
Christopher Cottrell
The Eagle
September 27, 2009

Vapor Containment Tents Going Up Around Glenbrook Road House

Investigations are currently paused at the ‘Pit 3 Area’ property as a result of the early August recovery of a flask containing a small amount of the chemical agent mustard ... As a precautionary measure, vapor containment tents will be constructed over three test pits where there may be additional intact laboratory glassware. Based on the findings of the excavations in these three test pits, the team along with our interagency partners ... will determine the approach for completing the remaining investigations and restoration on the property. Construction of these protective tents is expected to start in September.
Spring Valley Project Update
August 2009

The Corps expects further “high probability” digging at the Pit 3 location at 4825 Glenbrook Road to recommence in late October at the earliest, according to Dan Noble, the Military Response Program manager ... Switching back to high-probability procedures at Pit 3 will require additional precautionary measures ... “Our workers will be upgrading to a level B personal protective equipment, working off supplied air, complete skin protection and things like that,” he said.“So ... we have to essentially plan for a high-probability situation, get it through all the approvals we need to get it through, bring back the high-probability crews and get them trained up.”
Christopher Cottrell
The Eagle ~ September 9, 2009

Digging Suspended after Surprise Mustard Discovery at Burial Pit 3

Mustard flask found on August 4, 2009

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Baltimore District has temporarily suspended its investigation of Pit 3, located at 4825 Glenbrook Road at the Spring Valley Formerly Used Defense Site in northwest Washington, D.C., as a result of the discovery of an intact, open flask ... Following established procedures, workers secured the flask and took it to the federal property adjacent to the Washington Aqueduct. The Army’s Technical Escort Unit (TEU) took the flask to Edgewood Arsenal, in Maryland, for analysis on Aug. 5. On Aug.10, the Corps received confirmation that the material in the flask tested positive for the chemical agent mustard.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
August 12, 2009

Aqueduct Gen. Mgr.Thomas Jacobus: "The water is safe"

"Mustard gas in open containers is just as toxic now as it was 90 years ago," says Kent Slowinski, a Spring Valley resident, activist and thorn in the Army's side. "How can the corps say there's no risk?" That's the question D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton posed to corps project manager Daniel Noble on Thursday afternoon. When she heard about the mustard gas, she hauled Noble into her office. Norton has been relentless in keeping the corps on the case and prying information from the Army. "We want them to keep digging," she told me after the meeting. "They are not leaving until we say so."
Harry Jaffe
Washington Examiner
August 14,2009

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton is right to note that the Corps twice before has declared the cleanup complete, only to resume work after the discovery of more buried weapons. Officials must do everything they can to make sure this does not happen yet again, and it is essential that they fully investigate the cause of extensive groundwater contamination in the area ... Since munitions were first uncovered in 1993 by unsuspecting construction workers in Spring Valley West, the Army has spent $173 million on cleanup efforts. We're glad Del. Norton is working to ensure that this enormous project is done right
Davis Kennedy
Northwest Current
August 26, 2009