Army to Mail 'Munition Education' Brochures Across Spring Valley

Ensuring the community remains informed about the past military use of the area encompassed by the Spring Valley Formerly Used Defense Site [FUDS] is part of the overall Site-Wide recommendations developed to reduce risks to members of the community.  That means that in addition to the cleanup activities, like removal of contaminated soils and investigations to find and remove potential buried munitions, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will also promote munition education and awareness in order to further reduce risks in the event a munition item is encountered.  This will be through letters and brochures sent to all residents and institutions within the boundary of the Spring Valley FUDS once a year.  They will include information about the 3Rs (Recognize, Retreat & Report) of explosives safety.
The Corps'pondent
December 2018 (pg. 1)

 Mailings will be sent every spring (RAB #10)

USACE Baltimore will engage with the community and conduct a continuing education program indefinitely ... Mailings will be sent to the community once a year in the spring with information about the boundaries of the FUDS, the potential possibility that a munition could be encountered, and instruction on what to do if a munition is found.  The Department of Defense 3Rs explosive safety brochure has been customized for the Spring Valley site to include site-specific background information and photos of munitions found in Spring Valley from the WWI era ... The draft mailing documents have been reviewed by DOEE and EPA; no comments were submitted by the regulators.  [Project Mgr. Dan] Noble invited the RAB to review the two draft mailing documents and submit comments by the next RAB meeting in early March. 

 Draft Spring Valley brochure

USACE expects to address any comments and send out the first mailing at the end of March ... USACE must then inform and remind the public that the residual risk of finding munitions is an ongoing possibility in the area and what to do if a munition is found ... Noble explained that over the years there have been instances of what is termed "Amnesty Rounds," munitions that people have found, picked up, moved, and left in an obvious place for someone to find, instead of contacting 911.  Sometimes the munitions have been anonymously brought directly to USACE.  Munitions have been left at the USACE gate at the Federal Property; one was left out on the sidewalk on Nebraska Avenue alongside the AU Campus.  Finding a munition can happen anywhere.
Spring Valley FUDS 
RAB Meeting Minutes 
January 8, 2019 (pgs. 9 -11)   

Partners Begin 'Dispute Resolution' to Resolve Groundwater Impasse

Todd Beckwith [USACE Baltimore] said potential unacceptable risk for future receptors would occur if groundwater is used as a drinking water source in the future within Exposure Unit 2 — the area next to [American University’s] Kreeger Hall and adjacent to the Glenbrook Road disposal areas.  The main contaminants of concern are perchlorate and arsenic ... Steve Hirsh [EPA Region III] and Kathy Davis [EPA geologist] explained that EPA would have been okay with anything other than “No Action” or “Land Use Controls" ...  EPA would prefer to see the groundwater cleaned up, so the groundwater could be used as a potential drinking water source in the future ... Based on the Groundwater Feasibility Study, the Army Corps selected LUC/LTM  [Land Use Control/Long Term Monitoring] as the preferred alternative.  The preferred alternative is identified in the current Groundwater Proposed Plan (PP) ... Physical construction of treatment systems would be very challenging in this residential/campus neighborhood.  American University has gone on record that AU is opposed to the installation of treatment systems on AU property …

Thomas Smith [community member]: Can you explain why AU would not want the installation of treatment systems?  Is it because it is too big, or what?  It takes up too much space, or what is the issue?

Beckwith explained that AU stated that AU did not have the space and had other plans for AU property ...

Mary Bresnahan [community member]: Yes, that is what I thought.  If it is coming from their property, they should be willing to help out ... They do not want to take any responsibility at all?  That is what it sounds like …

Groundwater Feasibility Study alternatives

Mary Douglas [community member]:  Is there any provision for adjusting this remedy if EPA lowers the perchlorate standards?

Beckwith explained that contingency would be a factor USACE would have to consider.  He asked Steve Hirsh to share the status of establishing the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for perchlorate.  Hirsh explained that EPA is under a court order to establish an MCL for perchlorate.  He had no information on what the perchlorate MCL might be; the level might be below or above 15 ppb ...
 
Allen Hengst [audience member]: The problem is that under the court order which Steve just mentioned, EPA is supposed to come out with the new standard by December 2019.  That is when you are still going to be in the area, that is when you are still going to be working with groundwater … [The MCL] is probably going to go down, it is not going to go up … In Massachusetts it is 2 ppb and in California it is 1 ppb.  [In Spring Valley] you are talking about 15 ppb.

3-Tier dispute resolution process

Beckwith: After receipt of the draft final Groundwater PP, DOEE [DC Dept. of Energy & Environment] submitted a formal request for dispute resolution under the Department of Defense (DoD)/District Memorandum of Agreement (DDMOA), … which includes provisions for a three-tier dispute resolution process: Tier 1 — Baltimore District Commander, Deputy Director DOEE; Tier 2 — Headquarters-USACE Environmental Division Chief, Director DOEE; and Tier 3 — Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Environment, Safety & Occupational Health, DC Mayor.  The Tier 1 meeting [was] held on November 5: USACE/DOEE reiterated their positions on this issue; DOEE offered an alternative to collect more data for current conditions or proceed to Tier 2 ...

John Wheeler [community member]: What happens if there is no resolution in Tier 3?

Beckwith explained that no resolution in Tier 3 is a possibility.  DOEE is prepared to take legal action and may file a lawsuit.
Spring Valley FUDS
RAB Meeting Minutes
November 13, 2018 (pg. 14 - 22)    

"The Chemists' War" Came to an End One Hundred Years Ago Today

Soldiers test gas masks at AUES “man-test” lab (NARA)

Entering the [World War I] fray two years after Germany sparked the chemical arms race with a surprise chlorine gas attack in Flanders, Belgium, the United States Army had neither gas masks nor protective gear, and no capacity for producing or deploying chemical weapons ...  To correct those deficiencies, the War Department set up a laboratory, initially under the civilian Bureau of Mines, called the American University Experiment Station. It began modestly with one building and fewer than 100 researchers.  By the war’s end, almost 2,000 soldiers, scientists and civilians worked at the campus, which soldiers called “Mustard Hill” for the blister agent sulfur mustard.    

 Test trenches were filled in & land sold to developers (NARA)

The army leased nearby farmland for proving grounds, part of which the soldiers named “Death Valley” ... When the war ended, the scientists revealed they had developed a new weapon called lewisite, an arsenic-based blister agent ... Over the decades, developers turned surrounding land into an affluent residential neighborhood, transforming “Death Valley” into Spring Valley, in the northern section of the District of Columbia.  The WWI legacy was largely forgotten until 1993, when developers dug up a cache of mortars, triggering a state of emergency, evacuations and a lengthy cleanup.  In all, 141 munitions were found at that site ... 

 Gas tested on animals in concrete bunkers (Magnum/NYT)

Hundreds of munitions have been hauled away, most of them from a handful of burial pits.  Arsenic has been the most widespread chemical contaminant — the army has carted off thousands of tons of tainted soil and replaced it with clean topsoil.  Sulfur mustard, lewisite and other chemical warfare compounds — as well as traces of the constituent chemicals that remain after the warfare agents break down over time — have also been detected and removed.  Concerns about the health effects of chemical contamination among Spring Valley’s roughly 25,000 residents have long lingered over the cleanup, especially after a lengthy neighborhood newspaper investigation reported unusual illnesses and health problems among residents.
Theo Emery
New York Times
November 11, 2018

RAB Will Review Long-Delayed Groundwater Cleanup Plan

The Army Corps of Engineers told the Restoration Advisory Board, which is composed largely of Spring Valley residents, it drafted a feasibility study for cleaning dangerous ground water.  The World War I era poison gas experimental station polluted the water in Spring Valley and parts of American University's campus.  Dan Noble, who heads the Corps' Spring Valley project, plans to present a detailed cleanup plan at the board's next meeting in November ... Twenty-six Spring Valley property owners are requesting their lots to be surveyed for dangerous chemicals and munitions as early as possible ... The Corps plans to obtain rights-of-entry from owners of the remaining 65 residential properties it plans to survey ... Noble warned residents and members of the public not to touch anything that could be an old munition.  Today, 100 years after they were made, they are far more unpredictable if handled than they were a century ago ...

RAB briefing on Proposed Plan at Nov. 13 mtg (pg. 9)

Noble mentioned the Corps cannot force homeowners to give permission to check out their properties.  However, if there are grounds to believe something is dangerous, the Corps can ask the Environmental Protection Agency for permission ... Later this fall, the Corps intends to mail a brochure describing its plans and the history of the project to approximately 1,500 property owners and affected institutions such as American University and Sibley Hospital.  American University will be in charge of distributing the brochures to its students and employees.

SCRA soil removal scheduled this fall (pg. 16)

This fall, the Corps hopes to begin contaminated soil removal and restoration at the Spaulding-Captain Rankin Area [4710 Woodway Lane], adjacent to the southern end of American University.  It also tentatively plans to remove any dangerous soil underneath the foundations of the university's former Public Safety Building, which was recently taken down ...  Peter deFur, who announced he is retiring as a technical advisor to the cleanup project after 16 years with the board, said there was a "disposal area" for waste materials during World War I at one end of the former building.
Davis Kennedy
The Current
September 26, 2018 (pg. 1)

Disposal area under Public Safety Building (pg. 18)

Realtor 'Shocked' by Depressed Prices for Spring Valley Homes

The Army Corps of Engineers has begun efforts to find and clean up potential explosive and chemical hazards on 91 privately owned Spring Valley properties that might be affected by contamination from World War I-era munitions activity ... The Spring Valley cleanup encompasses about 660 acres that were used by the federal government for research and testing of chemical agents, equipment and munitions.  The project began in 1993, when a contractor unearthed buried ordnance.  The Corps is currently focusing on those 91 private properties and 13 lots owned by the federal and District governments ...

Mary Bresnahan, a [Restoration Advisory Board] member and Long & Foster realtor, said some real estate agents simply refuse to deal with Spring Valley properties within the area of concern.  When a realtor does show a property there, Bresnahan said there is a standard warning sheet that must be given to prospective buyers.  Some buyers, she added, often get a property for considerably less than it would be worth in a nearby area.  "I was shocked at a property, that was worth about $1.5 million that sold for $200,000 less," she said.  In recent months, work crews have excavated arsenic contaminated saprolite from the lot at 4825 Glenbrook Road.  That lot, owned by American University, was the site of last summer's worker exposure.  

Public Safety Bldg. before & after demolition (pg. 8)

 The remainder of the work at the site is governed by a plan requiring protective gear and air monitoring.  Work will be performed only when the temperature is under 75 degrees and there will be no hand digging  ...  [Project manager Brenda] Barber said the Corps has excavated soil samples from 12 boreholes through the concrete slab under the foundation of American University's recently demolished Public Safety Building and nothing dangerous was found in the 79 samples.  Once the gas utility line is rerouted, the concrete basement slab will be removed.  The Corps hopes to remove any contaminated soil and backfill the area in December.
Davis Kennedy
Northwest Current
August 7, 2018

US Resumes Destroying Obsolete Chemical Weapons in Colorado

 Over 100 igloos hold old shells with mustard agent (Chieftain)

The U.S. Army resumed destroying obsolete chemical weapons at a Colorado depot after a nine-month shutdown for repairs, officials said Wednesday.  The highly automated, $4.5 billion plant at the Pueblo Chemical Depot began a gradual restart this week.  It could take 60 days to return to full operation, site manager Greg Mohrman said ... The plant is destroying 780,000 decades-old shells containing 2,500 U.S. tons (2,270 metric tons) of mustard agent.  Although it’s often called a gas, the chemical is a liquid under most conditions ... The United States agreed to eliminate its mustard agent and all other chemical weapons under an international treaty.  The Pueblo plant uses robots to disassemble the shells and water to neutralize the mustard agent.  Microbes digest and convert the remaining chemicals, and the outcome is a dry “salt cake” that can be disposed of at a hazardous waste dump.  The plant began operating in 2016 but has experienced a series of problems, including a leak in a storage tank, a tear in a spill-containment liner at another tank and vibration in pipes that threatened to damage pumps.  Most operations stopped in September, after more than 43,000 shells had been eliminated ...

Robot disassembles shell during training at Depot (AP)

The Army is still working on a solution to a separate problem: rust and solids contaminating the mustard agent in some of the shells.  The rust clogs pipes and strainers, and officials worry it will make it difficult for the robotic equipment to open the shells cleanly.  Workers have to don protective suits and enter toxic areas to fix the equipment, increasing their risk of exposure.  Officials said they expected some contamination but not as much as they found.  The Army announced in March it wants to buy two closed detonation chambers, costing about $30 million each, to destroy 97,000 shells most likely to have excess rust and debris.  Officials are preparing a required environmental study and would have to get state and county permits.  Mohrman said the Army won’t make a final decision on the chambers until after the environmental study.
Dan Elliott
Associated Press

June 14, 2018

 Two detonation chambers will cost $30 million each (Linsley)

Site-Wide Effort Begins to Remove Spring Valley Buried Munitons

Crews working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have begun efforts in the field on the first properties identified for further investigation to mitigate potential unacceptable explosive hazards due to munitions and explosives of concern (MEC) that may remain within the Spring Valley Formerly Used Defense Site.  This work will occur at 91 out of the ~1,600 Spring Valley properties and 12 government-owned lots.  All property owners involved in this effort have been notified during the planning process for this effort ... The work at the properties, part of what is called the Site-Wide Remedial Action, involves working closely with property owners to coordinate for crews to map accessible portions of their lots for metallic anomalies buried underground.  Crews are then using state-of-the-art Advanced Classification technology to locate and remove selected anomalies that are determined to resemble munitions.  The work at all 91 properties and 12 government-owned lots is expected to take approximately three years to complete.
The Corps'pondent
June 2018: Vol. 19, No. 1