[CPEO-MEF] "Indian Head Vulnerable to Base Closure"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Indian Head Vulnerable to Base Closure 

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post 
March 6, 2005


Inside the gates of the Naval Surface Warfare Center's Indian Head
Division in Charles County, cell phones are required to be turned off
because the material manufactured at the center is so sensitive that a
wireless call could trigger an explosion. 

Ominous signs line the road to the torpedo fuel plant: "Nitroglycerin
Crossing," "Danger Nitrating: Keep Out." In a small room deep in an
earthen bunker, foreman Kenny Grimes watches the acids and polyols slosh
through the stainless steel reactor. 

"That's a very high explosive," he said. "Very, very unstable." 

With another round of military base closures fast approaching, a sense
of instability hovers over everything at Indian Head, a former gunpowder
factory perched on a 3,400-acre wooded peninsula along the Potomac River
in Southern Maryland. The base is the largest employer in the county,
providing 3,800 jobs -- many of them to high-paid chemists and engineers
-- and driving about 20 percent of the county's economy. 

But it is also emerging as perhaps the most vulnerable of Maryland's
major military installations in the base realignment and closure process
known as "BRAC." Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has set a goal of
slashing up to a quarter of the military's infrastructure to save $7
billion annually. The list of affected bases comes out in mid-May.

...

For the entire story,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10253-2005Mar5.html

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org
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