Jan 16, 2023

Ft. Totten ANC Wants More Testing in Vicinity of Toxic Dump Sites

So far, only limited areas around the trail and the original WMATA staging area [at Ft. Totten] have undergone any sort of testing.  There is very good reason to believe that the known toxic soil moved [pgs. 13 - 14] from the WMATA staging area in 1992 was used in the landscape restoration project ... a few hundred yards to the east — that's why the [AUES] soil was brought to the Ft. Totten area to begin with ... The vast majority of the area of concern — where landscape restoration took place [pg. 2] at the exact time and place a large portion of known toxic soil went missing, and in the exact location where a WWI-era chemical weapon was found 30 years later — remains completely untested ... 
Spring Valley is the richest part of DC, and is overwhelmingly white.  Why, then, when that wealthy part of DC dumps its toxic waste in a majority black neighborhood park on the other side of town, do we have to wait thirty-plus years to get some simple tests conducted?  We know with certainty that at least some of the exact same toxic soil that caused a thirty-year cleanup project in the wealthiest part of DC ended up here, in a middle class black neighborhood, why hasn't there been even a fraction of the effort on this side of DC?  There is ample evidence to suggest that there may well be chemical weapons and/or dangerous levels of chemicals of concern in our neighborhood park — more testing needs to be done.  

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Aug 6, 2022

Park Service Misled Delegate at Closed-Door Ft. Totten Briefing

Allen Hengst:  The Spring Valley FUDS clean-up team does not want to have anything to do with the contaminated soil which was moved [pgs. 13 - 14]  from Glenbrook Road to Fort Totten 30 years ago.  I understand that you washed your hands of that responsibility, but I am pursuing it now with Delegate Norton and ... had a long discussion with her staff last week about the Park Service’s [NPS] so-called investigation of a WWI-era 75mm exposed at Fort Totten Station two years ago.  That artillery shell with a hex plug was dumped in 1992 after multiple tons of soil containing munitions debris and lab waste from the 4825/4835 Glenbrook Road construction site was refused [pg. B-7] at Lorton Landfill ... 
 
[In 2021, NPS] searched the footpath, which is about 30 feet wide and 200 feet long.  The soil that was moved from the western section of Fort Totten Park on the orders of the Park Service ... to the area where this footpath is — there is no way on God’s green earth that all of that could have been put in that tiny area.  [The Park Service] needs to explore to the east and west ... [Norton] either misunderstood what the [NPS] said, or they have misled her.  The entire area is not the footpath.  She thinks that they searched the entire area, and they are probably thinking, "well we did search the entire area and the entire area is the footpath."  Sorry, that is not good enough.
 
Dear Congresswoman Norton,    
... Please note that the ultimate destination of the 1992 toxic Spring Valley fill material was a narrow wooded strip of land east of the Metro station between Gallatin and Galloway Streets, NE, approximately “2100 feet” [sic] east of the original staging area (August 2021 PA/SI Report, Introduction, pg. 2).  The controversy that obliges me to write today’s certified letter and my March 12, 2022, blog post — entitled “Norton Falls for NPS Whitewash of Fort Totten WWI-Era Munition" — can be neatly summed up by the statement: it all depends on what you mean by “the entire area.”  In his March news article WTOP Reporter Augenstein quotes you extensively, regarding your closed-door session with relevant officials involved in the NPS investigation at Ft. Totten, as stating: 
  
“We had a very in-depth meeting.  There has been a thorough search of the entire area, and no additional ordnance or issues had been turned up — I hope I can rely on that, this time.”  “They have assured me that they have done a very thorough search of the entire area.” ... “When they say the entire area, that’s what I’m going to hold them to.”
   
Of course, as documented in the previously cited August 2021 PA/SI Report, last year's investigation for additional buried Spring Valley WW-I ordnance and COPCs was anything but "thorough."  Even though the NPS knew, based on its 2019 SI Report that multiple tons of "uncompacted fill material” was dumped in western Ft. Totten in 1992 "as part of landscape restoration” [Section 2.2, pg. 5] and then removed, the recovery of an AUES UXO in July 2020 on the narrow strip of park land in eastern Ft. Totten did not trigger the wider examination that such a discovery should have warranted.  Instead, the agency chose to coverup the existence of additional buried munitions debris and laboratory waste, issuing a clean bill of health for this poisoned site.  In short, I believe the Park Service simply examined the narrow quarter-acre footpath and misrepresented that perfunctory search to the Congresswoman as an investigation of "the entire area."
Allen Hengst
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Apr 22, 2022

EPA Reaffirms 2020 Decision to Not Regulate Perchlorate in Water

The Biden administration on Thursday said it would uphold a Trump-era decision and not impose limits in drinking water of perchlorate, a contaminant that has been linked to brain damage in infants.  The announcement from the Environmental Protection Agency shocked public health advocates who had denounced the Trump administration in 2020 for opting not to regulate perchlorate.  The chemical is a component in rocket fuel, ammunition and explosives ... The Trump administration had found that perchlorate did not meet the criteria for regulation because it did not appear in drinking water “with a frequency and at levels of public health concern.”  Activists at the time accused the E.P.A. of disregarding science.  After President Biden took office, the agency launched a review of the decision and on Thursday endorsed it, saying it was “supported by the best available peer-reviewed science.”  
 
The E.P.A. said it would take other action, like setting up new monitoring tools and doing more to clean up contaminated sites, “to ensure that public health is protected from perchlorate in drinking water” ... Perchlorate can occur naturally, but high concentrations have been found in at least 26 states, often near military installations ... Research has shown that by interfering with the thyroid gland’s iodine uptake, perchlorate can stunt the production of hormones essential to the development of fetuses, infants and children ... The American Academy of Pediatrics, which had told the agency that perchlorate can cause a significant drop in the I.Q. of newborns and urged the “strongest possible” limits on the contaminant, declined to comment on Thursday.
Lisa Friedman
March 31, 2022
40 states manufacture or use perchlorate (EPA)
“The EPA’s failure to protect drinking water from widespread perchlorate contamination is unscientific, unlawful, and unconscionable,” said Erik D. Olson, Senior Strategic Director for Health at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council).  “The Trump EPA gave perchlorate a pass; it was a bad decision then, and it’s a bad decision now.  Tap water across America will remain contaminated by this toxic chemical, which threatens the brain development of babies in the womb, infants, and young children at extremely low levels.”  The Trump EPA relied on a deeply flawed analysis to select a “safe” perchlorate level that is 10 or more times higher than health-based limits set by state authorities who have evaluated the same data.  EPA then compared levels of perchlorate in tap water to their unjustifiably high “safe” levels and said there are not [sic] a lot of systems exceeding safe levels, so there is no need for regulation of perchlorate.  The agency relied primarily upon a two decade-old EPA snapshot of perchlorate levels in tap water and ignored other more recent data from USGS [United States Geological Survey] and others showing widespread perchlorate contamination ...
The Defense Department (DOD) and its contractors are major users of perchlorate and there are innumerable DOD facilities where perchlorate pollution has been identified.  DOD has opposed strict controls on perchlorate, in an apparent attempt to minimize its cleanup costs. Since perchlorate is unregulated, there is no federally required monitoring of tap water or requirement to inform a community of contamination.  In 2011, the EPA formally decided that perchlorate should be regulated because it is toxic and widespread, with the drinking water of as many as 16 million people contaminated by the chemical.  When the Agency failed to develop a standard by the deadline, NRDC sued, and then secured a court-approved consent decree requiring the EPA to issue a drinking water standard for perchlorate by 2019 ... NRDC agreed to extend the court-ordered deadline to 2020 when the Trump Administration asked for additional time.  Ignoring the court order, the Trump EPA announced in 2020 that it was purporting to rescind the Obama finding that a standard should be set, contending that EPA’s 2008 health advisory for perchlorate in drinking water is far more protective of health than needed.
NRDC sued the Trump EPA for refusing to set a standard; that case was held in abeyance with NRDC’s agreement when the Biden Administration said it would review the Trump Administration decision on perchlorate ... Massachusetts and California have set their own drinking water standards of 2 ppb to 6 ppb, respectively, because of inaction at the federal level.  EPA now cites the reduction in levels of tap water contamination in those two states as a reason that no national standard is needed, refusing to address the widespread contamination in other states.  EPA previously had found that as many as 16 million Americans’ tap water contains perchlorate, though it has not required national monitoring since a one-time snapshot done two decades ago.  The Obama EPA found in 2011 that a perchlorate drinking water standard was needed to protect health from the endocrine disrupting chemical, especially that of vulnerable fetuses and young children.  This finding triggered a legal duty to regulate perchlorate.        
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Mar 12, 2022

Norton Falls for NPS Whitewash of Fort Totten WW I-Era Munition

Learning of a possible link between an empty World War I shell, found in 2020 during construction of a trail through Fort Totten Park, and the decades-long Spring Valley cleanup of chemical weapons was concerning to D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton.  Now, after calling for a meeting with the heads of the National Park Service and the Army Corps of Engineers, Norton told WTOP she has been assured that no other evidence of World War I weapons or safety concerns have been discovered.  “I could not believe that we were finding unexploded ordnance,” said Norton.  “Not after what we went through, in 1993” ... The 1993 discovery [of a munitions burial pit on 52nd Court] prompted the Spring Valley cleanup in Northwest D.C. at the former American University Experiment Station (AUES) used by the U.S. government for research and testing of chemical agents, equipment and munitions — once dubbed the “mother of all toxic dumps” ...

As WTOP reported, the empty 75 mm shell found at Ft. Totten had been modified for use as a chemical weapon, and was similar to the weapons discovered in Spring Valley, according to Dan Noble of the Corps of Engineers, project manager of the Spring Valley cleanup.  Norton said she was told the ordnance discovered at Ft. Totten had likely been there since 1992, when contaminated soil from Spring Valley was trucked to a landscaping project at the Ft. Totten Metro station ... In 1992, the heavy equipment operator spreading Glenbrook Road soil at the Ft. Totten Metro site felt sickened from the fumes of the soil, and the U.S. Park Service ordered it be removed.  “We had a very in-depth meeting,” with park service and Army Corps officials, said Norton.  “There has been a thorough search of the entire area [sic], and no additional ordnance or issues had been turned up — I hope I can rely on that, this time.”  “They have assured me that they have done a very thorough search of the entire area,” Norton added ... “When they say the entire area, that’s what I’m going to hold them to,” Norton said.
 
In the April 2019 SI Report, the NPS said that “approximately 60 yards of uncompacted fill material,” containing Glenbrook Road soil contaminated with AUES munitions debris and laboratory waste, was dumped in the western section of Ft. Totten "as part of landscape restoration” in 1992 (Section 2.2, pg.5). Due to fumes that sickened the bulldozer operator who was spreading the fill material, the NPS subsequently ordered the toxic soil to be removed. As you know, the July 2020 75mm shell — recovered in a narrow wooded strip of land located east of the metro station between Gallatin and Galloway Streets, NE — had been adapted with a hexagonal plug to accommodate poison gas. Logic dictates that the 2020 discovery of this AUES munition, “2100 feet" east (August 2021 PA/SI Report, Introduction, pg. 2) of the 1992 dumping, originated from the Glenbrook Road construction sites and was, in fact, part of the multiple tons of relocated fill material. Even though the NPS — and now apparently Congresswoman Norton — are “reassured” that the April 2021 survey was “thorough,” I’m frankly horrified by this blatant obfuscation. As if the original transfer of toxic waste from one of the wealthier residential areas of our nation’s capital to a working class, Northeast neighborhood wasn’t bad enough, the NPS’ current boneheaded cover-up just compounds the error.
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Feb 10, 2022

Park Service Colludes in Covering Up Spring Valley's Darkest Secret

A World War I-era unexploded shell discovered in July 2020 by the National Park Service during construction of a trail through Northeast D.C.’s Fort Totten could be a prequel to the decades-long cleanup of a former World War I chemical weapons site near American University’s campus.  The type of weapon recovered and the history of where it was recovered have suggested a link between the discovery in Ward 5’s Ft. Totten and Ward 3’s Spring Valley cleanup at the former American University Experiment Station [AUES] used by the U.S. government for research and testing of chemical agents, equipment and munitions — once dubbed the “mother of all toxic dumps.”  In response to WTOP’s reporting, D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said she will be calling a joint meeting of the park service, the Army Corps of Engineers [USACE] and Metro to discuss the issue of the chemical weapon and what should be done about it ... A closer look at the empty shell found in Ft. Totten — one of seven Northeast D.C. forts used by the Union Army to defend the nation’s capital during the Civil War — revealed it had been modified for use as a chemical weapon.  “When we looked at the X-rays, it was a 75-millimeter ordnance item that we encounter quite a bit at Spring Valley,” said Dan Noble, of the USACE, and project manager for the ongoing Spring Valley Formerly Used Defense Site project. 
“It had a hex plug burster adapter screwed into the nose of the projectile,” Noble told WTOP.  “It would convert what was developed as a conventional munition into a chemical munition” ... Even before a contractor digging a utility trench in Spring Valley in 1993 uncovered a buried military ordnance, which prompted the USACE investigation that revealed homes on Glenbrook Road were built atop chemical weapon burial pits, contaminated soil from Glenbrook Rd. was trucked to a landscaping project at Ft. Totten Metro station ... In 1992, the heavy equipment operator spreading Glenbrook Road soil at the Fort Totten Metro site felt sickened from the fumes of the soil, and the U.S. Park Service [NPS] ordered it be removed, Noble told [pg. 13] the Spring Valley Restoration Advisory Board ... Allen Hengst, who has been blogging about the issue for the last 15 years, said he thinks the contaminated soil was moved from the Ft. Totten Metro site a few hundred yards away to the area where the trail is being constructed.  Hengst said he believes the NPS search after the 2020 discovery was perfunctory, and limited to the immediate trail area in Ft. Totten.  Hengst suggests a wider search would likely uncover more chemical remnants from the Spring Valley site.  It’s not clear any more physical investigation will be done.
 
ANC Seeks 'thorough' Investigation
Of Toxic 1992 Dumping at Ft. Totten
 The possible link between an empty World War I shell, discovered in 2020 during construction of a trail through Ft. Totten Park, and the massive Spring Valley cleanup of chemical weapons has the local Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner seeking a “thorough investigation.”  Gordon-Andrew Fletcher, ANC Commissioner 5A-08, represents the area where the NPS discovered a World War I-era unexploded shell during construction of a paved, lit trail through wooded parkland that will replace  an informal path neighbors in Michigan Park used to get to the Fort Totten Metro station in Northeast D.C.   ... Fletcher said:  “I do commend Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton for calling for a meeting with all necessary stakeholders, because this is an environmental safety issue.”  
In response to WTOP’s reporting that the empty 75mm shell discovered by the NPS had been modified for use as a chemical weapon and that contaminated soil from the Spring Valley cleanup had been trucked to Ft. Totten in 1992, Norton said she would call for a joint meeting of the NPS, the USACE, Metro and council members and ANC from Wards 5 and 3.  “I think we have to make sure we do a thorough search, a thorough investigation, to make sure that there’s nothing there, for years to come,” said Fletcher, who is also a candidate in the upcoming primary for Ward 5 council seat ... “The NPS investigation of the trail site at Ft. Totten did not reveal any additional shells or concerns for the health or safety of the community,” said [NPS spokesperson Cynthia] Hernandez ... “Ward 5 already has many environmental safety concerns due to air pollution and leaking underground storage tanks,” said Fletcher, noting that residents in the Brentwood neighborhood have filed suit against Mayor Muriel Bowser to stop the District from building a bus depot.   While a lengthy investigation would likely slow construction of the long-awaited path, Fletcher prioritizes safety. 
February 10, 2022
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Jan 24, 2022

NPS Releases Two Reports in Response to Sept. FOIA Request

Thank you very much for providing a relatively complete answer to my September 2021 request for more information concerning last April’s investigation of the World War I-era 75mm artillery shell that was exposed following heavy rains in July 2020 ... FUDS cleanup program director Dan Noble informed the RAB on January 12, 2021, that USACE had "inspected and obtained x-rays of the shell" and that "the shell was found to be a 75mm with a hex plug” [Minutes, pg. 7].  According to DOEE specialist Richard Albright, during WW I the experiment stations at Lakehurst, NJ, Edgewood Arsenal, MD, and AUES adapted the Army’s standard high explosive 75mm field artillery round by adding a hexagonal plug to accommodate poison gas.  Hence, there can be no doubt that the shell discovered at Ft. Totten in July 2020 came from the Glenbrook Road munitions burial pits in Spring Valley in northwest Washington, DC ... 
 
I cannot read the two voluminous reports you provided for several weeks but, after a cursory review of their contents, I’m absolutely astounded that — taken together — these documents definitively solve an enduring mystery that has bedeviled Spring Valley FUDS cleanup stakeholders for nearly thirty years.  Namely, what ultimately happened to the soil contaminated with chemical warfare materials (CWM) and laboratory waste from the 4825 and 4835 Glenbrook Road construction sites that was dumped and subsequently removed from Ft. Totten National Park in 1992.  In short, these two reports finally reveal that the ultimate destination of the toxic Spring Valley fill material was a narrow wooded strip of land located east of the Metro station between Gallatin and Galloway Streets, NE — approximately 2100 feet (or seven football fields) away from the original staging area [2021 PA/SI Report, Introduction, pg. 2].
Not only does the 2019 SI Report delineate the precise staging area at Ft. Totten where soil with contaminants of potential concern (COPCs) were originally spread by the bulldozer [see Figure 2 map, pg. 22], it states that “approximately 60 yards of uncompacted fill material” was placed there "as part of landscape restoration” [Section 2.2, pg. 5] ... If the NPS already knew — from its 2019 SI Report — that multiple tons (“60 yards”) of Glenbrook Road soil with COPCs was originally spread out west of the Ft. Totten Metro station in 1992, why — after discovery of an AUES UXO roughly 2,100 feet east of that location — was the April 2021 investigation confined to that very narrow footpath instead of a much larger area on either side?  
 
The question of how much toxic Glenbrook Road fill material still remains at Ft. Totten cannot be answered until the NPS conducts a more thorough and transparent investigation.  At the March 9, 2021, RAB meeting I asked director Noble [Minutes, pg. 13] whether he thought the tons of contaminated soil that were moved from Spring Valley could have been “contained in the one-quarter acre where the foot trail is [now located]?”  If the NPS “only surveys the foot trail,” I suggested, "they’re going to miss [contaminated] soil to the east and west.”  Please excuse me for saying so but, in your agency’s zeal to obtain a clean bill of health at Ft. Totten, this now appears to be exactly what happened.
Allen Hengst
Email to NPS Chief Bartolomeo
January 24, 2022 (pg. 2)
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Dec 21, 2021

WWI Chemical Weapons Cleanup Completed at 4825 Glenbrook Rd

After decades of efforts, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers [USACE] said Tuesday that cleanup at the site in Northwest D.C. along Glenbrook Road, where World War I chemical weapons were tested and disposed of, is complete ... The project in the Spring Valley neighborhood at 4825 Glenbrook Road NW — part of a larger area known as the American University Experiment Station, and once called the “mother of all toxic dumps” — started in 1993, when a contractor unearthed buried military ordnance on nearby 52nd Court NW.  
 
Digging and research indicated the likely presence of mustard gas and lewisite — an arsenic-containing blister agent.  The property was tested between 2007 and 2010, and the decision was made in 2012 to remove the house at the site.  Starting in 2013, USACE began excavating under the house’s foundation.  The work was done under a huge high-tech enclosure, which prevented chemicals from escaping into the neighborhood.  Over the years, there had been some setbacks.  In 2017, seven workers were sickened and temporarily hospitalized during the cleanup.

"During the war, there was no military research more urgent or secret than what took place in this corner of the District,” USACE Col. Estee Pinchasin said.  About 1,500 chemists, scientists and soldiers worked at what was known as the American University Experiment Station to research chemical warfare in 1917 and 1918.  When the war, ended many of those weapons and chemicals were buried in what is now one of the most expensive neighborhoods in D.C. ... The biggest deposit was at 4825 Glenbrook Road.  “The team discovered seven different chemical agents, six other chemicals that had unique military applications,” Pinchasin said.  “And Glenbrook Road was the only site in the United States where weaponized arsine was encountered in 75 mm projectiles.” 

The entire site covers more than 600 acres of Spring Valley.  “This one quarter acre property had the most significant contamination and the largest burial pits we discovered in Spring Valley,” said Brenda Barber, who has overseen the Glenbrook Road site for USACE for nine years.  The home that once stood there was taken down.  Beneath it they found more than 2,000 pounds of laboratory debris, 53 glass containers still filled with chemical agents, 7,500 tons of contaminated soil and more than 550 munitions ... USACE expects the remaining work in the area to take about two to three more years.  The remediation project has cost about $300 [$338] million so far [pg. 10].   
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