[CPEO-MEF] Corps of Engineers to outline plan to rid Butner area of UXO

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North Carolina
THE COURIER-TIMES
Corps of Engineers to outline plan to rid Butner area of UXO
By Neal F. Rattican
December 15, 2003

A small corner of Person County has a potentially explosive personality.
Whether it really does — or not — the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers
wants to find out.

How the Corps plans to go about that task will be the subject of a
public informational meeting scheduled for next week in Butner in
neighboring Granville County — where explosiveness, or the lack of it,
is an issue of considerably greater concern.

Officials from the Corps of Engineers’ Wilmington District will host the
Tuesday, Dec. 16, meeting, slated for 6 p.m. in the Butner Town
Operations Building at 205
West E. Street, to discuss results of a engineer evaluation/cost
analysis study recently conducted at Camp Butner, the former military
installation operated by the federal government for infantry, and some
artillery, training during World War II. At the time, Camp Butner took
in 40,384 acres, primarily in Granville County but also spilling over
into adjacent Durham and Person counties.

The government shut down Camp Butner in 1947 after conducting what it
said was an extensive cleanup effort. Even so, unexploded ordnance — or
UXO for short — and ordnance scraps continue to turn up within the area
of the former military camp, and the government acknowledges that some
UXO undoubtedly remains on the properties, posing a potential threat to
public safety.

Early in 2000, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers contracted with Parsons
Engineering and Construction to conduct a study of the former camp
grounds in search of any remaining UXOs and related scraps. Parsons
mapped and surveyed, not all, but sample quarter-acre segments of the
land with special imaging equipment capable of detecting the presence of
metal. All metal objects so detected in the sample plots were dug up and
examined. The goal of the evaluation was to find the contaminated areas
and to recommend further action to address those areas.

The initial evaluation turned up 13 explosive objects, which
subsequently were destroyed. They included such ordnance as fuses,
bazooka rounds, grenades and 155mm artillery shells. Many scrap metal
items also were discovered.

According to the Corps of Engineers, “these findings strongly indicate
that further unexploded ordnance is present on the former installation.”

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.roxboro-courier.com/sections/topstories/0312136UXO.htm

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