US Army Landfill in Germany

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Thank you very much for mailing me your Guide. It is very helpful and
interesting for us.

In our case of the already capped landfill at the US training area
Grafenwoehr/Germany, there are still some questions, may be your readers
can help me:

1. The landfill was capped 5 years ago. The aim was to stop leaching out
of toxic substances like heavy metals and so on. We always said, just
capping will not work, because the site is on a slightly hill and we
think, surface water is running through the dump. The tendency of the
analyses done for the Army by a German contractor is proofing this. If
you have a little time, take a look at our homepage, where we publish
all the analysis.
(http://home.t-online.de/home/rainer.knoll@t-online.de/zubdaten.htm)
Some explanations for German expressions (I`m sorry not to have an
English version):
name of the dump: "Haderbühl"
GD means a biological test for generell toxicity
Hg means mercury
"Elektr. Leitfähigkeit" means electrical conductivity
"Grundwasserstände" means the groundwaterlevel of the controllwells
P1, P2 ... this are these wells
see their location on the map

2. Directly next to the old leaching landfill there is a new one. So it
seems to be possible to do a consolidation. But what are the criterions
for a decison like this? What levels must be found, how toxic
groundwater has to be? Up to now we had very bad discussions with
German(!) authorities, who refuse to say, that capping the dump doesn`t
bring the expected effort. We brought along scientists, confirming our
oppinion. We publish all this things in the newspapers (see our press
releases, sorry but in German). Up to now we are not succesful. It seems
to be a joke, but the US Army is not involved in this discussion! They
just wait, what will happen. Are there any American laws, forcing the
Army to act now, because it is no doubt that this dump is toxifying the
groundwater since many years and it will not stop?

3. Do you have any proposals what we can do more? We tried to do an
indiction and involved the public prosecutor. Not unexpected for us we
were told that this is impossible, because the US Army as a host army is
protected by the NATO regulations. Therefore we did the same thing with
the German authorities. No idea, what will happen........

I hope you don`t mind this "cry of helplessness", but I try to get any
information that will help us to save our nature and groundwater !

Rainer Knoll
<rainer.knoll@t-online.de>
Zusammenschluss umweltbewusster Buerger