Unexploded ordnance to remain at Camp Ibis

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California
NEEDLES DESERT STAR
Unexploded ordnance to remain at Camp Ibis
By Lee Choquette
March 3, 2004

NEEDLES -- A panel of experts from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the
Bureau of Land Management and the California Department of Toxic
Substance Control came to Needles on Feb. 25 to discuss the results of a
search for unexploded ordnance at Camp Ibis. They also presented the
Corps' proposal for dealing with the ordnance. The Corps will accept
comments on its proposal until March 19.

Camp Ibis lies about 21 miles northwest of Needles. It covers over
13,000 acres in the Piute Valley and the Dead Mountains, north of
Interstate 40 between Highway 95 and Laughlin. It was established in
1942 as one of 10 desert training camps to prepare the military for
action in North Africa. Soldiers trained with both practice and live
ammunition fired from tanks and howitzers, as well as hand grenades,
tear gas and anti-tank mines. The training ended by 1944, but Camp Ibis
was used again for a military exercise called Desert Strike in May of
1964.

In 2000 the Corps contracted Parsons Corporation to study the former
camp to determine how much unexploded ordnance might be there, and
whether this ordnance posed a threat to human health or to the
environment. Don Silkebakken, project manager with Parsons, gave a
presentation on this study at the Needles High School.

Last year, Parsons analyzed historical records of the military exercises
and then selected 104 acres for sampling. These areas were considered
representative of what might be found in the entire camp.

During the spring of 2003, a team covered the areas on foot to avoid
disturbing environmentally sensitive areas such as tortoise burrows.
They pulled a cart with a metal detector and a global positioning
system, and dug by hand in over 1,000 suspicious locations. Of these,
254 yielded either practice ordnance or fragments of ordnance that had
functioned properly and had no explosive left.

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