19 WW-I Munitions Unearthed Near AU's Former Public Safety Building

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers confirmed with WTOP that 19 full or partial World War I-era munitions were found Tuesday on the campus of American University in Northwest D.C. — which served as a chemical weapons testing and disposal site during the first World War.  All of the recovered munitions were 75 mm projectiles.  Two projectiles contained an undetermined fluid, which prompted USACE to summon the Army’s Fort Belvoir’s 55th Ordnance Company and D.C.’s Fire & Emergency Services to the scene.  The two suspicious munitions were safely assessed, packaged and transported to the nearest military installation — Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Harford County, Maryland — for additional assessment ... At Aberdeen Proving grounds, X-ray technology and a Portable Isotopic Neutron Spectroscopy System — or PINS — will enable investigators to identify the suspicious liquid non-intrusively, without having to open the projectile. 

 

PSB site cleanup began in fall 2019 (Squyres/EAGLE)

The devices were found in a steep hillside on Rockwood Parkway NW, next to the former AU Public Safety Building, which was demolished in August 2017.  The area where the projectiles were found was in a fenced-off Army Corps worksite, near Fletcher Gate, on the southern edge of the campus.  Remediation crews have been excavating potentially-contaminated soil under and near the former public safety building.  The painstaking, safety-based work is a continuation of the decadeslong cleanup in the Spring Valley neighborhood ... In a statement to WTOP, D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said, “I’m deeply concerned about the suspected munitions found on American University’s campus” ... “I have sounded the alarm when similar munitions have been found in D.C. since 1993, and I’ll continue to work with the relevant entities until I’m satisfied the threat has been contained,” she added.  In 2022, WTOP reported that a World War I-era unexploded shell discovered by the National Park Service during construction of a trail through Northeast D.C.’s Fort Totten may have been transported from the Spring Valley cleanup site, adjacent to AU.
Neal Augenstein
WTOP News
 June 7, 2024