[CPEO-MEF] MUNITIONS, REGULATION: "Navy to address impact of firing weapons into the Potomac for a century"

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

Navy to address impact of firing weapons into the Potomac for a century
After leaving tons of tested munitions on the river bottom since 1918, the Navy has agreed to seek a dumping permit from Maryland regulators


By Tom Jackman
Washington Post
January 12, 2024

After more than a century of test-firing weapons into the lower Potomac River, the Navy this week agreed to seek a “permit for discharges of pollutants” from the state of Maryland for the Navy’s largest test-firing ground, 50 miles south of the District.

But the Navy would not say what steps it would take to limit discharges at the site, called the Potomac River Test Range, which begins at its base in Dahlgren, Va. The range stretches 50 miles along Virginia’s Northern Neck peninsula and the tree-lined Southern Maryland shores of Charles and St. Mary’s counties, with the river itself considered Maryland’s jurisdiction. The range ends where the Potomac flows into the Chesapeake Bay.

The Navy also declined to say whether it would do anything to remediate the more than 33 million pounds of ordnance it fired into the river through 2009 — including 225 tons of the toxic heavy metal manganese and 15,000 tons of iron — and the ordnance it continues to fire today.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/01/12/navy-weapons-potomac-dumping-dahlgren/

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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