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The
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it will return to Spring Valley every
five years after completing its cleanup in 2020, to check that the area
is verifiably free of contamination. The Army has been working for
over two decades — and has spent over $200 million — to rid the
neighborhood of munitions and chemical contamination left there during
World War I, when American University hosted a munitions testing site.
While the plan is to finish remediating the site within the next five
years, the Army Corps will “check in perpetuity,” Dan Noble, who manages the cleanup effort, told the community at a recent meeting of the Restoration Advisory Board ...
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This new pledge to stay involved is a
significant and welcome shift from the past: About a decade and a half
ago, the Army declared the neighborhood clean. Luckily, the D.C. Health
Department raised doubts. When the cleanup resumed, workers soon found
elevated arsenic levels in the soil near American University’s child
development center and intramural fields, as well as buried munitions on
Glenbrook Road. This time, we look forward to both an accurate bill of
health and continuing checkups to ensure that status is maintained.
Editorial
Northwest Current
March 25, 2015
Dan Noble: CERCLA is the environmental regulation that guides our efforts here at the site ... The remedial investigation phase that we are reporting on in tonight's presentation, is right here at the yellow star ... The report looks at all the effort that we've done and all the data that we've gathered and is basically intended to boil it down to what really matters ... We've thought about the tentative schedule to get through the process and to get to the point where we're actually taking action to address these cleanups. We want to finalize the RI Report by early summer, complete the Feasibility Study by the end of the year, by next spring we want to bring you a Proposed Plan and by the end of summer [2016] have the Decision Document signed. So we hope by the start of calendar year 2017 that we can start undertaking some of these actions.
Dan Noble, Project Manager
Spring Valley RAB Meeting
March 10, 2015
The Spring Valley Formerly Used Defense Site (FUDS) consists of approximately 661 acres in Northwest Washington, D.C. During the World War I-era, the site was known as the American University Experiment Station (AUES) and Camp Leach. It was used by the U.S. government for engineer troop training, research and testing of chemical agents, equipment, and munitions ... The Site-Wide Remedial Investigation Report summarizes the results of completed field activities performed to characterize the nature and extent of any potential contamination resulting from past DoD activities in the Spring Valley FUDS ...
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Human health risk assessments, as well as an ecological risk assessment, were developed to evaluate possible chemical contaminants. Munitions hazard assessments are documented in the report to evaluate potential munitions hazards at different areas throughout the Spring Valley FUDS. Finally, the report describes areas identified through the risk and hazard assessment processes, where the Army Corps of Engineers recommends a Feasibility Study (FS) to address potential remaining concerns ... The FS will outline how the Corps of Engineers plans to address any potential unacceptable risks and hazards. After the FS the Corps of Engineers will prepare a Proposed Plan, which will identify a preferred clean-up action to address remaining risks and hazards.
Spring Valley FUDS
Site-Wide Remedial Investigation Fact Sheet
February 2015
A state agency has lowered the Public Health Goal for perchlorate, a dangerous pollutant found in many underground water basins across the Southland ... The goal was lowered Friday from 6 parts per billion to 1 part per billion, officials announced ... The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment updated its Public Health Goal based on “the inhibition iodide uptake into the thyroid gland and the consequent disruption of thyroid hormone production,” the agency said in a statement. The PHG update considers recent research providing new information on exposures to and possible effects of perchlorate, focusing on infants, the agency said.
Jim Steinberg
San Bernardino County Sun
February 27, 2015
The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment today published an updated public health goal (PHG) of 1 part per billion for perchlorate in drinking water ... The updated PHG is lower than the previous goal because it incorporates new research about the effects of perchlorate on infants. Like the previous PHG, the updated PHG takes into account exposure from all sources of perchlorate including food ... “This updated public health goal reflects infants’ increased susceptibility to the health effects of perchlorate,” said OEHHA Director Dr. George Alexeeff. “It is set at a level that would provide health protection for people of all ages.”
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... Perchlorate is known to block the thyroid’s ability to take in and process iodide, which is a nutrient essential to brain development, growth, heart function, and other systems. Studies conducted by OEHHA scientists and others have revealed that perchlorate can harm the health of infants at lower levels than the levels that are harmful to healthy adults. OEHHA’s updated PHG incorporates new data on how much water infants consume per kilogram of body weight. It also considers infants’ intake of perchlorate from infant formula reconstituted with tap water.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced it will release an updated report about the progress of World War I munitions cleanup around AU and Spring Valley on March 10 ... The report is part of a regulatory process overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency and D.C. District Department of the Environment to determine if more cleanup efforts are required, according to Andrea Takash, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army Corps segment that is overseeing the cleanup ... Takash said: “We have been talking about this remedial investigation report for over a year. What is new is there are about 100 properties that this report will identify as properties that [the U.S. Army Corps] will want to look at further” ...
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The sites of former weapons usage and disposal, the U.S. Army Corps has determined, need further evaluation about potential contamination or buried munitions, according to Takash. Among the properties that will be examined and included in the remedial report are portions of the AU campus near Kreeger and Watkins Halls. The March 10 report will include an overview of the project, analysis on findings and future plans and expectations for cleanup, as well as updated evaluation about the AU sites. The properties identified for further evaluation will be notified and informed before the report is released to the public.
Katherine Saltzman
The Eagle
February 16, 2015
Many may have read the NW Current article in the January 21 issue ... We would like to clarify that the areas noted in the article are general locations that underwent focused evaluations in the report, not the recommendations made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for further investigation. The Site-Wide Remedial Investigation report recommendations will be provided at the March 10 Restoration Advisory Board meeting and will be further discussed and presented at a community meeting during the 45-day public comment period this spring. The report is currently being reviewed by our project regulatory partners (EPA and D.C. District Department of the Environment). Comments are expected from the regulatory stakeholders in February. We hope to address comments and obtain regulator concurrence sometime in March.
More than two decades after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began cleaning up World War I-era contamination from Spring Valley and American University, the Army has said its work in the neighborhood is mostly complete. But last week, officials reported that some century-old munitions might remain in the area, and that some residents may be living in properties where there is an “unacceptable risk” from hazardous chemical contamination in the soil ... During World War I, American University hosted the U.S. Army’s main chemical warfare testing station. Munitions tests, and the postwar burial of various hazardous materials, contaminated areas of the campus and the surrounding woods, which subsequently became the Spring Valley community ...
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About four dozen properties are in an “area of interest” that includes Fordham Road roughly between Sedgwick and Quebec streets ... The Army will also look into a smaller area on the south side of Woodway Lane adjacent to the American University campus, and an adjacent area in the southwest corner of the campus around Kreeger and Watkins halls. Meanwhile, a 120-acre area elsewhere in the neighborhood, comprising roughly a hundred properties, might still have buried munitions that haven’t yet been recovered ...
“I suspect there could be some people who will be very upset,” Dan Noble, who is in charge of the Army’s cleanup efforts, said at the meeting, noting that it might take several years to remediate a contaminated property ... Among the chemicals that could be found at a dangerous level in the soil are arsenic, mustard, lewisite, cobalt, certain heavy metals, antimony and a group of three polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
Northwest Current
January 21, 2015
For more than 20 years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been conducting clean-up operations to remove World War I materiel discovered at various locations on or near the American University main campus and throughout the Spring Valley neighborhood. The presence of these materials dates back to 1917–18, when parts of the AU campus and the surrounding area were used by the U.S. government and the U.S. Army to support the war effort as a site to develop and test chemical weapons.
On December 1, 2014, the Army Corps is scheduled to resume excavation activities along Glenbrook Road, which parallels the southern border of AU’s campus ... This new phase of the project entails the exploration of an area where World War I era munitions were previously discovered; tests conducted on munitions removed from this site indicate the possible presence of chemical agents ...
Given the nature of these materials, the Army Corps has implemented extensive safety precautions including a containment structure and filtration units around the excavation area to prevent the release of harmful chemicals into the environment in unlikely case of an accident, and monitors to detect any unusual airborne agent. The university wants to ensure that everyone knows the excavation is taking place and is prepared to take appropriate actions if necessary.
David Taylor
American University
December 1, 2014
The quarterly sampling of the wells in front of Kreeger Hall on American University and the Sibley Hospital sump was concluded in September. The September quarterly sampling detected perchlorate concentrations above 15 parts per billion (ppb) at MW-44 and PZ-4D on AU’s campus ... The wells PZ-4S&D (sampled since 2006), MW-44, and MW-45S&D in front of Kreeger Hall at AU all represent different depths to get vertical delineation of the areas’ groundwater ...
MW-44 was installed in March 2012. Its results consistently range from 33 to 50 ppb. MW-44 is a deeper well. The groundwater flow at this depth is an order of magnitude less than PZ-4S, which means that the groundwater flow at PZ-4S may be around a foot a day, compared to an inch a day at MW-44. This means that the contamination seen at MW-44 may take longer to flush out over time ...
MW-21 and MW-22 are shallow wells along MacArthur Boulevard, and the Sibley sump is in the bottom of the elevator shaft at Sibley Hospital ... When MW-22 was first sampled, the perchlorate concentrations were around 5-10 ppb. The most recent sampling results in December 2013 and June 2014 detected perchlorate concentrations at 17 and 25 ppb.
Todd Beckwith, USACE
RAB Meeting
November 18, 2014 [pgs. 4 - 6]
The other new well was placed in the road on Rockwood Parkway, near the tip of the Rockwood Parkway "island." This multi-port well will further evaluate if there is any connection between the American University perchlorate plume and the plume detected in the vicinity of Sibley Hospital ... The Groundwater RI [Remedial Investigation] report will provide a summary of the groundwater investigation to include ... the nature and extent of contamination ... If the HHRA [Human Health Risk Assessment] does determine that any of the COPCs [Chemicals of Potential Concern] pose an unacceptable risk, a Feasibility Study will be performed to evaluate alternatives to address the unacceptable risk and identify Remedial Action objectives.
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