From: | Ted Henry <thenry@umaryland.edu> |
Date: | 08 Dec 1998 12:56:52 |
Reply: | cpeo-military |
Subject: | Re: Oral Histories of Base Pollution |
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 ******************************************************************* 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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