Re: Oral Histories of Base Pollution

[Ted Henry <thenry@umaryland.edu>]

Len

You make a good point about interviews, as APG has learned a great deal from
such interviews. To take this one step further, however, it must be
remembered that the lack of clear or methodical effort to uncover historical
contamination extends beyond this specific issue. 

At APG we have seen:

*A peninsula claimed to be free of chemical warfare testing, only to have it
announced years later that APG FOUND additional records indicating CWM was
used in the Aberdeen Area. (One person has lead me to believe that this
activity was likely known by certain military folks but the correct
individuals were not asked)

*The mention of biological materials as possibly being used at APG in a RCRA
Facility Assessment 10 years ago, but only in the last year has APG looked
into the records on this issue (a report and risk assessment is now pending). 

*The existence of Tech Escort Quarterly Disposal Reports that outline the
number and types of materials disposed of in decades past but no mention of
these documents to the community. 

*The recent discovery or acknowledgement of various records at the Chemical
Biological Defense Command at APG regarding Edgewood testing, although this
vault is not new and certainly was known about by many at APG. While we know
what certain general areas were used for, we still lack the needed specific
knowledge for site prioritization, safe excavation, etc, that these records
will likely provide. When we will get the money to evaluate these records to
help the Installation Restoration Program efforts that have been on going for
15+ years remains an unanswered question. 

*APG did move forward and conduct a records search of firing records for the
Aberdeen Area for three common rounds (75mm, 105mm and 155mm). This search
will be very useful as a starting point. Yet, it should be noted that we need
more records reviewed to assess other contaminant sources, such as 250 pound
bombs fired into the Chesapeake Bay (not to mention the other 27 calibers
tested at APG). These records that were reviewed were in boxes in the
basement of a library and took over two years to sift through. One
recommendation from this report was that other records needed to be better
maintained, as various films and pages were already unreadable. I have been
informed that despite this recommendation, the Army Material Command chose
not to provide money for the safe keeping of these and other records. 

*Various pits of munitions and dump areas have been discovered only by
accident, as in the case of a dump that was discovered as a result of a
spontaneous fire that burned down a marsh area. We continue to find
specific environmental contaminants in different areas where APG "did
not expect" to find such contaminants (such as RAD, tear gas munitions,
etc)

These examples are not unique to APG. I seem to recall a recent story that a
few states in the midwest assessed their FUDS and found munition
contamination at many sites the Corp of Engineers stated were not
contaminated or in need of remediation (people can correct me on the
specifics if needed; I believe Colorado was one of the states). I assume the
Corps conducted some records search prior to the assessments. 

The point is that in my years of doing this kind of work, historical record
searches are hit or miss. Some records are looked at but I have seen no
methodical reference to the databases reviewed or archeives searched for a
given action nor have I read or heard of specific effort to pinpoint other
records that might be useful (although APG is finally getting better in this
arena). Of course, reference lists are provided for documents written, but
how do we know if the historical references are 10% or 1/10th of 1% of the
records actually available. 

Reasonable concerns exist regarding the extent to which fiscal hurdles hinder
efforts to conduct good historical information searches and whether
searches/interviews that do take place are influenced by the notion of "what
we do not know is there, we do not have to clean up". 

We should ask ourselves how we can improve the information
search/characterization process in general, with one approach being the
inclusion of more interviews. I have seen little evidence that
archeives/sources are well utilized or evaluated in the clean up process and
I wonder whether we are doing our initial homework poorly, which would
greatly hinder our ability to make adequate predictions regarding
contamination present and potential future impacts. 

We use institutional controls although we have little objective data
regarding their effectiveness. As a nation we have been developing munitions
for hundreds of years for all different kinds of environments but have no
data regarding degradation rates of munitions. It would do DoD, the
regulators and the communities some good to ask "what clear structure exists
for collecting and assessing historical information, what archeives exist and
how often are they accessed, and what are we assuming regarding the
historical information (or lack of) that we are basing our site
characterization, sampling protocols and baseline risk assessments on?" 

While I am sure that certain efforts are made in good faith to find any and
all useful information, I am equally sure that other searches are less than
adequate. While they may appear costly and time consuming, I am not sure that
moving forward without a full evaluation of information that is sitting in
some dusty filing cabinet saves money, time or lives in the long term. To
date, it seems that this part of the clean up process is more of a black box
than a clear, open process, and I think the repeated discovery of unexpected
contamination is partly the result of our less than thorough assessment of
historical records and experienced military minds. 

Sincerely

Ted

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Theodore (Ted) J. Henry, MS

Managing Director,
Community Health Assessment & Public Participation (CHAPP) Center
Department of Pathology
University of Maryland, Baltimore
100 North Greene Street, Room 417
Baltimore, Maryland 21201
(410) 706-1767 - phone
(410) 706-6203 - fax
thenry@umaryland.edu
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