[CPEO-MEF] Trash dump from 1940s is unearthed by workers

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Maryland
Trash dump from 1940s is unearthed by workers
Officials to investigate site for contamination
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By Rona Kobell
Sun Staff
Originally published February 16, 2003

The private company overhauling military housing at Fort Meade halted
construction in a small area of the project Friday when workers
discovered what appears to be a trash dump from the 1940s.

Workers with the Picerne Real Estate Group - the Rhode Island company
that broke ground on the $3 billion project last month - discovered
debris in a half-acre, wooded area east of Fort Meade's golf course last
week. Base officials, who toured the site Friday for the first time,
said the area is filled with old soda, milk and after-shave bottles,
glass and pottery shards, and other household trash.

Picerne has fenced off the area so environmental regulators can examine
the site for possible contamination.

"They have to find out what it is, how large it is and what needs to be
done," said Fort Meade spokeswoman Cynthia Lyles-Quinn. "It's another
case of 'it was buried and we were unaware it was buried.'"

It's not the first time construction workers have dug up a problem on
the base. In 1995, while building a warehouse at the old Defense
Reutilization and Marketing Office, workers uncovered 267 buried drums
of oil and solvents that had leaked into the soil and ground water. The
finding led to the base being named to the Environmental Protection
Agency's Superfund list of the nation's most hazardous sites.

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