Corps Claims No Public Safety Plan Needed for WMD Disposal in DC

DC City Council Joint Public Hearing (3/29/10)

"The longest running play in America is here in Washington and it is named Shear Madness, which in my view is exactly what this decision is," said Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Stu Ross. "Just pause and think for a moment about what would happen if someone got it wrong." Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Thomas Smith added, "As history has shown us, accidents happen. It would be nice to know there is a plan in place that is more detailed than somebody saying, 'Whoops.'"
NBC 4
Washington, DC
March 30, 2010

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has not developed a public safety plan for responding should an accident occur during next month’s destruction of chemical munitions in Spring Valley ... Prior to allowing work to begin, technicians will monitor weather conditions to ensure that in the event of a release the chemical plume would not pose a threat by the time it could reach the residential neighborhood, which is 380 feet from the demolition site.

“As the plume moves away from the origin point, it becomes more and more dilute, and so when it reaches [that] distance it is so dilute that there’s no way it could cause a health threat anymore,” said Dan Noble, the Army Corps Spring Valley project manager.
Ian Thomas
Northwest Current
March 31, 2010 (pg. 1)

Artillery Shells Found on Ground alongside Dalecarlia Parkway

Two 90-year-old artillery shells were found in flagged area

Up until the snow storm in early February, preparations for the geophysical survey of the Dalecarlia Parkway/DC right-of-way area continued. The team continued removal of underbrush and bamboo as well as the clearance of any metallic surface debris. During the surface clearance, two munition debris items, both from 75 mm munition items were recovered. Neither posed any hazard to workers or the community.
Spring Valley Project Monthly Update
February 2010

Shells found on range fan yards west of Dalecarlia Parkway

Lend a Helping Hand to Re-brand "Operation Safe Removal"

Since 1993, the Army Corps of Engineers have marched under the banner Operation Safe Removal. Considering their arduous efforts, and how much removal they’ve done, the Army must be exhausted by now. Their operation name is exhausted, too — it just doesn’t seem to fit anymore. You can help refresh that tired Army operation by creating a new name, logo, or tag line. How? By entering the Environmental Health Group's re-brand "Operation Safe Removal" contest. See details at ...
Re-Brand Operation Safe Removal
April Fool Contest

Chemical Weapons To be Neutralized Next to Reservoir within Six Weeks

The RCWM (Recovered Chemical Warfare Materiel) is destroyed on site using the EDS. The EDS is a mobile treatment system designed to destroy RCWM. The EDS would be transported to the SVFUDS federal property and staged near the current storage facilities ... The EDS uses explosive cutting charges to open the munitions, followed by addition of neutralizing agents that neutralize the chemical agent. The explosive detonation and chemical neutralization process is conducted within a stainless steel containment vessel which contains the blast, vapors and fragments ... The liquid and solid wastes are containerized and shipped off-site to a permitted TSDF. 
Disposal of Recovered Chemical Warfare Materiel
Action Memorandum, Spring Valley FUDS
February 2010

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' recent decision to destroy chemical and conventional weapons behind Sibley Hospital some time in April, raises a number of unanswered questions ... Army officials inflated the cost of moving the munitions by including $200,000 to fly the munitions by helicopter to a military facility. All that's needed is the Tech Unit pickup truck and a police escort
Kent Slowinski
Northwest Current
March 24, 2010 (pg. 10)

"Buried in History" to Compete at DC Environmental Film Festival

Janet Bohlen points to where munition was found

Produced by Georgetown University students, BURIED IN HISTORY is a gripping 11-minute documentary that uncovers a hidden story in Spring Valley, one of Washington, D.C.’s most affluent neighborhoods and site of a chemical research 
facility during World War I. It will compete with seven other short student documentaries at the Environmental Film Festival. The program will be introduced by Chris Palmer and Sandy Cannon-Brown, Professors, American University. A panel discussion follows.

Student filmmakers Nick Troiano, Lucy Obus, Brett Davis & Mary Kate Robbett with Kent Slowinski

Army Concedes Recent Finds "Remarkably Similar" to Sgt. Maurer Pit

Bottle necks recovered on Glenbrook before February snow storm

The Army Corps of Engineers recovered five more broken glass bottlenecks at its 4825 Glenbrook Rd. investigation, bringing the total to eight bottlenecks found in the last month, according to the Corps’ Spring Valley project manager Dan Noble ... At the Feb. 16 Restoration Advisory Board meeting, Noble said the bottlenecks recovered looked “remarkably similar” to the bottles depicted in a 1918 photo with Army Sergeant C. W. Maurer standing amid approximately 30 glass jugs ... The Corps showed photos of the current investigation, which revealed a white substance in the soil where workers found the broken bottlenecks. “This is consistent with what you see in that photo,” Noble said. “We see the white powder in the photo, and we see white powder here in the ground."
Christopher Cottrell
The Eagle (February 25, 2010: pg 4)

AUES debris recovered on Glenbrook before February snow storm

Perchlorate at Kreeger Registers Over Three Times EPA Standard

Perchlorate is 50 ppb at PZ-4 in front of Kreeger (pg.8)

The Environmental Protection Agency has set the [interim advisory] safety standard for perchlorate levels in drinking water at 15 parts per billion ... Fourteen samples from four wells in the AU and Spring Valley area exceed the EPA perchlorate advisory level, including one sample from a well near the Kreeger Building with perchlorate levels of 146 ppb as of June 2007 — almost 10 times the EPA standard, according to the Corps. But when the Corps took a reading at that well last November, that number was down to 50.
Christopher Cottrell
The Eagle
February 22, 2010

"The Army’s most recent perchlorate sampling with lower numbers come from tests conducted in November under far different conditions then all previous sampling which had been done in the spring and summer. In their conclusions, the Army neglects to consider soil density and rainwater differences in seasons, and uses, for comparison to the November data, summer sampling more than two years old."
Jeffrey Hanley, Class of 2009 
The Eagle
February 22, 2010 (pg. 3)

Perchlorate exceeds federal advisory limit at Sibley (pg. 10)

"I participated with hydrologists from EPA, the Corps, USGS, DC and URS — the company that does the groundwater testing — and there was more than a little discussion about where that perchlorate is coming from. We've been trying to work on speculating and gathering information that we've gotten in order to go beyond speculation. It's a sore spot for us trying to figure it out. And also, as Todd pointed out, we've had this discussion of the number of cases in which we've worked on groundwater sites where you never definitively identify where the contamination is coming from. It's an ongoing problem."
Peter deFur, Ph.D., Technical Consultant 
Spring Valley RAB
February 16, 2010