[CPEO-MEF] Arsenal water will be tested, officials say

[CPEO Moderator <cpeo@cpeo.org>]

Virginia
ROANOKE TIMES
Arsenal water will be tested, officials say
By Mike Gangloff
Saturday, November 08, 2003

The Radford Army Ammunition Plant is still going to test for the rocket
fuel ingredient perchlorate at the arsenal's two public water systems -
but under its own terms, not in cooperation with the Virginia Health
Department, an arsenal official said Thursday.

"We're going to try to use a better method," plant operations chief Rob
Davie said. "We're committed to testing."

The systems, which draw from the New River, supply drinking water to the
arsenal and to areas of Pulaski and Montgomery counties. The health
department began talking to the arsenal about testing after arsenal
officials said last summer that they found perchlorate in groundwater at
an old waste dump on the bank of the New River.

Environmentalists and clean water advocates have sounded alarms about
perchlorate since the late 1990s, when perchlorate-testing methods
improved and the substance began being found around munitions plants and
military firing ranges across the country. The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency links perchlorate to thyroid malfunction, tumors and
developmental problems in infants.

Health department officials said their plans fell through to test water
samples from the arsenal systems' intakes in September and on a
quarterly basis after that.

"The sampling never got started," health department technical services
assistant Monte Waugh explained Wednesday from Richmond, "because they
[the arsenal] canceled the order."

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.roanoke.com/roatimes/news/story158035.html

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