THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 9, 1996 TAG: 9602090453
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
Using a new power granted by Congress, Gov. George F. Allen has blocked efforts to list an old munitions depot in Suffolk - which now encompasses a Tidewater Community College campus - as a Superfund toxic-waste site.
Superfund is the federal program launched in 1981 to clean up the worst toxic dumps in the nation. But it has been roundly criticized for its high costs and inefficiencies.
Despite objections from environmentalists, Congress last year empowered governors, at least temporarily, to stop new waste-site listings in their states by just saying no to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which manages Superfund.
In correspondence last fall and this winter, Allen told the EPA that designating the former Nansemond Ordnance Depot in Suffolk a potential Superfund site would only slow its cleanup, deter ongoing development of neighboring property and hurt the area's image, officials said.
The 975-acre site, overlooking the Nansemond and James rivers, lies in what local economic officials and developers hope is the next boom area in South Hampton Roads.
They have banked much on the success of several planned commercial and residential projects in the Interstate 664 corridor between Portsmouth and Suffolk. A declared Superfund cleanup would hardly help promotions.
``It just made no sense to us on several fronts'' to allow a Superfund designation,'' said Peter Schmidt, Allen's appointed director of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
The move comes as the EPA has just completed a detailed study of the former depot, where hundreds of tons of weaponry were processed during World War I and II.
The study, released last week, found high levels of lead in a 100-yard-long waste pit along the James River, but little evidence of dangerous munitions elsewhere.
``We're concerned about the lead, but this is not a screaming situation,'' said Bill Steuteville, an EPA Superfund coordinator who oversaw the study.
Much of the concerns about the site to date are based on aerial photos and incomplete military records that show a dizzying amount of powerful chemical and conventional weapons coming to the depot, but not necessarily leaving.
Citing a lack of Army and Navy export documents, environmental experts worry that at least some of these weapons may still be buried.
``There's too many pieces of information missing,'' said Robert Thomson, an EPA Superfund manager in Philadelphia, who has been investigating the site since last year. ``This is a tough one for us because so little is known.''
Experts counted sufficient environmental and safety risks - including the discovery in 1987 of unexploded TNT at a campus soccer field - that the EPA scored the site as a candidate for its Superfund list. That scoring is being questioned now by EPA's senior leaders as perhaps too severe, and also has been rejected by Allen as a premature and alarmist step by the federal government, officials in Washington and Richmond said this week.
Dominion Lands, a subsidiary of utility giant Virginia Power, is developing a commercial center on property that, in part, touches the old depot. The company has financed its own munitions sweep, which unearthed one World War II-era anti-aircraft shell and an odd set of brick-lined vaults that experts speculate were used to burn old wastes. Construction continues.
Most investigative work at the site remains to be done. The Army Corps of Engineers is charged with leading the search, which has been stymied for lack of funding, said Kirk Stevens, a corps official in Norfolk. Stevens said money has been appropriated for a yearlong probe, beginning in April, which will sample hundreds of suspected dump sites throughout the property.
In the meantime, a huge pile of dirt removed during construction of a campus parking lot, in which old fuses and weapons shards were discovered, must be removed and cleaned, EPA officials said.
Officials also are debating whether to fence off a waterfront section of the property, near the Monitor-Merrimac Bridge-Tunnel, where artillery shells and other debris have been found on the shores of the James River.
The area is believed to be an old waste pit, which now is eroding to expose buried and burned military materials. It was here that lead levels were abnormally high, Steuteville said. ILLUSTRATION: Vp Map
KEYWORDS: SUPERFUND TOXIC DUMP by CNB