THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 9, 1995 TAG: 9511090378
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
A weapons team has uncovered a live anti-aircraft shell, 10 rusty chemical drums and 30 underground brick vaults as part of an environmental investigation at the former Nansemond Ordnance Depot, officials said this week.
Found beneath less than 3 feet of soil, the discovered items are the latest clues in the effort to determine what, if any, risks are buried at the old military depot overlooking the James and Nansemond rivers.
Virginia's secretary of natural resources says she is unhappy with the pace of the investigation, led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Becky Norton Dunlop said in a letter that she wants the site surveyed and cleaned up so the land can be developed.
Sprawling across 975 acres that now include the Suffolk campus of Tidewater Community College, the depot processed thousands of tons of conventional and chemical weapons during World Wars I and II, military records indicate.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is concerned that the site may require a special hazardous-waste cleanup under its Superfund program. Such a move would complicate development of the scenic area, located in the fast-growing I-664 corridor between Portsmouth and Suffolk.
Indeed, it was a development firm that made the latest finds. Dominion Lands hired an ordnance team to survey eight wooded areas west of the campus where the Richmond-based company is developing Bridgeway Commerce Park.
Don Priest, president of Dominion Lands, said the 20mm anti-aircraft shell was the only piece of ammunition found in the surveys. After isolating the shell, earth work continued on the large commercial project.
``We're doing these ordnance sweeps and are doing more testing,'' Priest said, ``but we're moving right along; we've not really been held up by any of this.''
But in a letter last month to Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., Dunlop wrote that the Corps of Army Engineers ``is not adequately addressing the hazards associated with the site and is not working in a timely manner to ensure these hazards are identified and remediated.''
Dunlop asked Warner to help speed the review through his political clout with the military in Washington so ``we can get about the business of putting this site back into productive use,'' according to her letter.
Bill Brown, a Corps spokesman in Norfolk, said his agency would like to move faster but is restricted by budget cuts.
He said other old military outposts in the country have received higher priority, because of to their higher perceived risk, but that money is budgeted for Nansemond beginning next April. It should take a year to survey the entire property, and the cleanup contract is scheduled to be awarded in March 1997.
The site first came under scrutiny in the mid-1980s, when a young boy discovered traces of the explosive TNT on a campus soccer field. That led to an Army removal of two tons of buried TNT and spurred testing of the college's drinking water system, which so far has passed muster.
Until now, most traces of ammunition and old weaponry have been found closer to the waterfront, where depot operations were focused.
While not dangerous by themselves, the inland discoveries have led some officials to suggest that munitions were once washed out, burned and buried in forest areas previously thought pristine.
``We're calling that section the burning ground,'' said Devlin Harris, an administrator monitoring the site for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
Harris and others noted that their suspicions are fueled by the fact that, according to old military maps and documents, nothing is supposed to be buried in wooded areas southwest of the waterfront.
``There's no evidence of roads, nothing on a map, to indicate that there was anything going on (in that area). Yet we're finding that activities were going on out there. It makes you wonder,'' said Robert Thomson, a hazardous-waste specialist and project manager at the EPA's regional office in Philadelphia.
Another federal regulator, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, was asked to study whether drinking water at the college was at risk.
Based on a review of records, the agency found no ``basis for conducting additional public health assessment activities,'' according to an Oct. 26 letter from the agency.
Tom Stukas, an agency representative who studied water records, said he believes the college should continue monitoring its water, which is drawn from wells. Some departments have bought bottled water for drinking. ILLUSTRATION: VP Map
KEYWORDS: POLLUTION ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD by CNB