[CPEO-MEF] Arsenal told to test water for pollutant

[CPEO Moderator <cpeo@cpeo.org>]

Virginia
THE ROANOKE TIMES
Arsenal told to test water for pollutant
Drinking water to be checked will be supplied to Prices Fork, the plant
and parts of Pulaski County.
By Mike Gangloff
September 6, 2003

FAIRLAWN - State regulators this week asked the Radford Army Ammunition
Plant to begin testing for the rocket fuel ingredient perchlorate in
drinking water it supplies to plant workers, to the new Prices Fork
water system in Montgomery County and to parts of Pulaski County.

Since emerging as a national issue in the late 1990s, perchlorate
pollution has been found around military bases and defense plants around
the country, particularly in California, where the most widespread
testing has been conducted. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
links perchlorate to thyroid damage and tumors, and developmental
problems in infants.

At the Radford arsenal, a vast, Army-owned, contractor-operated facility
that calls itself the largest propellent manufacturer in North America,
perchlorate is one of a number of potentially hazardous substances
discovered during a years-long, ongoing effort to clean up waste pits
and other sites mostly used before modern environmental laws were in
place.

Monte Waugh, a technical services assistant at the Virginia Health
Department, said his agency's decision to ask for quarterly perchlorate
tests was prompted by arsenal statements in June that perchlorate was
found in a 1999 analysis of groundwater at a burial site for waste
propellant ash in the eastern tip of the Horseshoe Area, a part of the
plant enclosed by a large bend of the New River. Since the result was
quite low, showing a concentration of just a few parts per billion, a
second groundwater test was performed last year. Results are not yet
available, Army arsenal

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.roanoke.com/roatimes/news/story154859.html

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