Army housing site primed for investigation
Published Friday, June 20, 2008
Digg
del.icio.us
Facebook
Mixx
Reddit
Stumble It!
FAIRBANKS — A Washington D.C.-based watchdog group is asking the Department of Defense Inspector General to investigate why the Army built housing over an area of Fort Wainwright contaminated with a toxic chemical and filled with old munitions.
Construction was halted in the summer of 2005 at Taku Gardens, a planned 128-unit housing area on Fort Wainwright, when construction crews discovered two inert bombs dating from near World War II. Only 79 housing units on the 54-acre site have been completed to date.
Since then, six more pieces of inert munitions have been discovered as well as an area roughly 100 feet by 10 feet contaminated with PCBs, an organic compound once used as a coolant that can cause rashes and poison humans. PCBs may also be harmful to the cognitive development of humans.
“This is a huge screw up, and the Army’s only explanation is that it was the result of miscommunication,” said Jeff Ruch, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the group calling for the Department of Defense investigation.
PEER claims a membership of more than 1,000 civilian federal employees dedicated to upholding environmental laws. Two civilian employees originally came forward to PEER with their concerns that there was not a proper environmental assessment of Taku Gardens, Ruch said.
Bob Hall, the public affairs officer for U.S. Army Garrison Alaska, said such accusations are baseless. Contractors were required to take one core sample to test for contaminants for every acre of the construction site, and they happened to miss the relatively small area containing PCBs, he said.
“The PEER report is pretty full of inaccuracies,” Hall said.
PEER also claims that chemical agents were found at the site and that radioactive materials may also be found there. The Army clarified that one M-47 canister contained an unknown liquid which had to be treated as a chemical agent until it was found to be water.
“I have no idea what they’re referring to with radioactive material,” Hall said.
Ruch said the possibility of radioactive materials under Taku Gardens was mentioned by one of the two civilians who came forward to PEER. What is clear, however, is that there is still work to be done to clean up the construction site. U.S. Army Garrison Alaska is currently working with state and federal organizations to complete an environmental investigation.
It’s likely that some housing built over the land contaminated by PCBs will have to be torn down. PEER estimates the total project will cost $100 million, while Hall said the Army will have spent about $68 million before a single family can move into Taku Gardens. PEER has yet to receive a response to their complaint sent to the Department of Defense last week. Ruch said the group might take their concerns to Congress eventually.
“Beyond Taku Gardens, there’s the larger concern of the lack of environmental compliance in the armed services,” he said. “It’s typically not regarded as central to the mission. They feel it’s inconvenient, and right now this could happen again tomorrow.”
Community Discussion
Newsminer.com doesn't necessarily condone the comments here, nor does it review every post. Read our full user's agreement.
Such a fine example of Alaska being a dumping ground!
The military are the worst polluters on the earth! they pollute and then years later it bites them and innocent civilians in the as..s
They KNOW about all the pollution, they just don't care, they'll just build over it. All I have to say is employees, soldiers, DON'T drink the water.
The old "801" housing on Ft Wainwright was build on the old POL dump. I personally worked at that dump for two years. Moving thousand of barrels of ??? with fork lifts, every now and then the forks would slice open one and that one had to "burried" before my shift was over. That was over 45 years ago, my point is as long as it is left alone just what harm is it doing? Where is the common sence in all of this? Millions of dollars are WASTED on these witch hunts. Words like "inert munitions" could mean empty shell casings, or anything the mind could imagine . Lets not cry the sky is falling, someday it just might be...
how embarrassing.
The newsminer left out the best part- PCBs are known carcinogens!
"my point is as long as it is left alone just what harm is it doing? Where is the common sence in all of this? Millions of dollars are WASTED on these witch hunts."
Bugger, have you ever heard of Love Canal, and other Super Fund sights? Do you know anything about the hazards PCBs pose to people? Out-of-sight, out-of-mind does not work with these carcinogens. Maybe you think breathing asbestos is harmless as well. I sure hope you are not in a position to make decisions regarding cleanup of lands polluted with PCBs and other toxins.
Yeah they KNEW this location was contaminated yet they chose to built "family housing" there anyway....goes to show how they REALLY feel about their soldiers.....completely unacceptable! It sickens me to no end!
I don't think the Army KNEW it was there or they would have known it would have been discovered during the construction process. I think they took the one sample per acre as required and missed the contamination. Could they have done a little more research? Maybe, but it is possible there were no historical records for that area. They could have spent a ton of money and taken a ton more samples - above what they were required to take - and in most cases it would have just been a waste of money. I think in this case PEER blew things out of proportion and flat out lied about some things to get a reaction. Personally, I am not jumping on their bandwagon on this one.
That's the toxic ooze of Freedom. You whiners should be proud to have that as part of your community!
Those persistant lesions are an everyday reminder of the Freedom that most people take for granted.
Buck up, if don't think is okay you must be anti-American!
Reminds me of those corny, "Return of the living ..." movies that shows the military bottling up zombie juice in barrels and burying them around the countryside.
Fellow Americans
Why are you worried about this small incident on Ft. Wainwright?
You'll be surprise of what takes place behind closed doors of national defense. They are currently stripping our private rights
for future to come.
Reinstate God and Country and fire all the crooked politicians!
Just another FUBRA, ####-up behond repare, the whole post is classed as a hazerdist dump site!!! We all might be surprised what else could be found around the post. Try looking on those un-named roads that run all over the hill by the ski slope.
I tend to lean towards a much larger portion of FWW being hazardous.
I don't think they ever determined what made those construction workers sick a few years back.. I *think* they were working on building the new hospital..
Whats worse... building a hospital or a family neighborhood on top of toxic waste.
Maybe now we can save energy. If we all glow in the dark we won't have to use as much fuel to keep warm.
It's worth reading what PEER has to say about this at their website. The Army is stonewalling and dragging its feet.
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row...
Post a comment
Commenting requires registration.