DATE: Wednesday, April 16, 1997             TAG: 9704160502

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:   80 lines

FEW WEAPONS UNEARTHED NEAR TCC EPA TO LOOK FOR CHEMICAL CONTAMINATION.

After six months of digging, Army investigators have found five pieces of buried weaponry - including a rocket and artillery shells - at a former munitions depot that now encompasses a college campus.

The findings, while criticized by some as incomplete, nonetheless support a theory that few safety risks remain at the former Nansemond Ordnance Depot, once a busy military post that recycled chemical and conventional weapons during World Wars I and II.

``What it means is that there appears to be no large cache of ordnance, which was our initial concern,'' said Robert Thomson, a hazardous waste specialist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Philadelphia.

However, noting possible chemical contamination of groundwater, the EPA is studying the 975-acre property that overlooks the scenic confluence of the James and

Nansemond rivers as a potential Superfund cleanup project.

Gov. George F. Allen blocked its listing last year as a Superfund candidate, citing a lack of evidence. Superfund is a federal program that aims to purge some of the dirtiest toxic waste lands in the nation.

Developers in this fast-growing area on the Suffolk-Portsmouth border are hoping such a notorious designation does not come their way, which could hurt the image of their high-dollar ventures.

Indeed, just the threat of Superfund is taking a toll.

``We're at a standstill, really, because we just can't market our property with this cloud hanging over our head,'' said Don Priest, president of Dominion Lands, a real estate subsidiary of Virginia Electric and Power Co. Dominion Lands wants to develop the Bridgeway Commerce Park on about 400 acres in Suffolk, 100 acres of which fall within the bounds of the former depot.

Before any additional work on the park can proceed, Dominion Lands needs clearance from the Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA, Priest said.

Since October, contractors hired by the corps have dug up and inspected 36 areas suspected of harboring old munitions. They found just five items: a 4 1/2-inch rocket, two smoke grenades, a 40 mm shell and a 75 mm shell. Only the latter shell was live, said project manager Kirk Stevens.

None of the weaponry was discovered on the grounds of the Tidewater Community College campus, but rather was pulled from forested areas west of the school, Stevens said. The areas are owned by General Electric Co. and Dominion Lands.

As a precaution, Stevens said, the munitions were stacked in a sheltered bunker and blown up.

The corps and EPA are now conducting chemical tests in various locations. Thomson said his agency remains concerned with a beachfront on the James River, not far from the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel, that has previously shown high traces of arsenic and lead.

Erosion is peeling back the sandy beach, exposing rusting canisters, broken shells and other debris. Officials believe these remnants prove the beach was once a dumping ground.

Now fenced for protection, the beach will have to be cleaned up or sealed, corps and EPA officials have said. A final disposition is pending further test results.

``The worry, of course, is that some of these agents will get into the James River; then we'd have a real problem,'' Thomson said.

Margaret Lordi, a Portsmouth activist who has pushed the government for years to better investigate the site, said she remains skeptical of the corps and its findings.

Lordi, founder of a group known as the Urban Guerrilla Union, noted that the corps already has been told once to go back and study more of the property. And she ticks off a laundry list of potential problems that she wants pursued.

``Hey, I'm for future development out there,'' she said, ``but if there's a kid digging in his backyard in the future and gets himself hurt, or worse, I'm going be on the front page the next day saying, `I told you so.' ''

The property first attracted headlines in 1987 when a young boy playing soccer on a college ball field discovered what turned out to be TNT, an explosive, buried in dirt.

His find led to a large Army excavation and cleanup of an underground concrete slab laden with TNT. Since then, government officials have scrutinized the tract for further potential risks. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

Map

Area shown: Former depot site

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