Re: DoD Future Land Use

["Theodore J. Henry" <thenry@umabnet.ab.umd.edu>]

On Tue, 8 Jul 1997, Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org> wrote:
> 
> 5. There have not been many sites (individual areas within larger
> installations) cleaned up to restricted-use standards prior to the
> initiation of the transfer process, so we don't really know what DOD's
> practice or the regulatory response will be.

For general knowledge, there are two sites at APG known as Carroll Is. and
Graces Quarters which will reach the Proposed Plan stage this year; these
sites were used for Chemical agent testing from the late 1940s to
apporoximately 1970. The selected alternative will likely be making them
a natural reserve based on the fact that it is impossible to clean-up the
sites in their entirity, particularly since glass and other types of
containers of CWM are likely present and cannot be detected by
magnetometry. Since APG is an active base, this property will stay under
Army control with posting, occasional clearances,etc. I guess what happens
to such land in the future is part of the issue.

 >
> 6. As I understand current policy, DOD would review property proposed
> for transfer. If any parcel has not been cleaned to standards required
> for unrestricted use, it would seek to get the prospective owner to
> agree to the institutional controls that restrict that use. The new
> owner could agree to the restrictions, the owner could refuse and DOD
> could refuse to make the transfer, or the owner could pay for
> additional remediation. DOD will not conduct additional cleanup simply
> to enable new uses.
>

I have been too busy in the past to track it personally, but I know some
land was transferred from Fort Meade (Maryland) for use as an airport and
the discovery of significant UXO contamination during or after the
transfer raised some interesting problems between the Army and the local
government. If anyone on the listserver is familiar with specifics about
the case, I think they would be interesting to discuss in this context.

Ted Henry