[CPEO-IRF] Ft. Gillem (GA)

["lsiegel@cpeo.org" <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Army's toxic legacy

Pollution seeps from Fort Gillem -- and neighbors get studies and promises

By John F. Sugg
Creative Loafing Atlanta
August 16, 2006

Hooray, weapons of mass destruction have been found -- and no one had to
savage a foreign nation to do the job. In fact, inquiring minds need only
trek about 10 miles south of downtown Atlanta to discover a patch of turf
where a 1,000-pound mustard gas bomb is buried.

The bomb has a history. For a start, it was made by Nazi Germany, but never
dropped. It was captured and, in 1946, shipped to Atlanta. Sixty years ago,
the bomb was sitting on a freight car at a railroad crossing at DeKalb and
Delta avenues when it began leaking.

...

Fort Gillem is scheduled to be shuttered. Will that mean the government
will finally finish scrubbing the fort clean? Not necessarily and not
immediately.

Contamination at the fort was identified more than a quarter-century ago.
There was a flurry of activity in 1992 and 1993 after the Georgia EPD
issued an order calling for resolving the water contamination.

So far, the Army has spent about $30 million to study and clean up
hazardous waste at the fort. The government in 2004 said another $12
million was needed to finish the job. Yet Brent Rabon of the Georgia EPD
says the next step is another study to determine (yet again) the extent of
the pollution. There have been 90 studies on the problem since 1976.

...

For the entire article, see
http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A111068

-- 
Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org



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