Norton Gets Federal Assurance of No Exit From Spring Valley Until Ordinance Is Cleared (6/10/09)
Norton Gets Federal Assurance of No Exit from Spring Valley Until World War I Ordinance is Cleared
June 10, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C. - At a hearing today, Norton admonished the Army Corp of Engineers for announcing that it would be finished with cleaning up of World War I ordinance and leave the 15-year clean-up of World War I ordinance without notifying the Government Oversight and Reform Committee or submitting credible evidence that the ordinance had been fully cleared and that the community is safe. Spring Valley is the birthplace of the Army's chemical weapons program in pre-home rule Washington. The federal government allowed full development of a community without informing the city or residents of potentially dangerous ordinance until they were accidentally found by a utility worker in the early 1990s.
In her opening statement, Norton said, "The Corps had no right to announce its exit without more, especially considering the many errors and missteps so far and an absence of transparency over the years that borders on suppression on information. Neither Congress nor the community has seen the Corps' two-year exit plan or other evidence that the area has been fully cleaned. Appropriate oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been in question. The decision to destroy the munitions on site raises a host of additional issues. No objective evaluation has been done to assure that this time there are no more ordinance in the area. This hearing and others that may be required seek and must obtain the answers the District and its residents are entitled to have before the Army leaves the nation's only residential site it once used to develop chemical munitions."
Norton's full opening statement is below:
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON
HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL WORKFORCE, POSTAL SERVICE AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
OPENING STATEMENT
SPRING VALLEY ENVIRONMENTAL RESTORATION PROGRAM
JUNE 10, 2009
I very much appreciate Chairman Lynch's willingness to schedule this hearing early on our subcommittee agenda. I listed Spring Valley as one of my top priorities in a letter to the chair as the legislative year began because of the national and local importance of confronting federal responsibility for informing residents of toxic substances in communities, particularly when the federal government itself deposited them there and has an undisputed responsibility to clean the area and to shoulder the burden of proof of showing that the area is again safe. I appreciate that, beginning in my early years here in Congress when I was in the minority, this committee has held every hearing that I have requested to assure that the Spring Valley neighborhood surrounding American University is cleared of World War I chemical and other weapons by the Army Corps of Engineers.
I ask my colleagues to put yourselves in the position of my Spring Valley constituents who have worked hard to purchase homes in one of the District's most attractive neighborhoods. By sheer happenstance, a utility worker discovers a cache of old weapons and, in short order, they are identified as buried chemical ordinance left behind by the Army. There are similar areas called Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) around the country where munitions have been buried and cleaning is necessary. However, they are usually far from densely populated areas. We know of no other FUDS in a major American city where a residential area was developed without the government disclosing that it had buried potentially harmful munitions. Munitions also were buried in other areas of the District in Northeast and Southeast, but Spring Valley is the largest uncleaned residential area here where munitions were buried. Worse, Spring Valley was the birthplace of the Army's chemical weapons program. Yet, at the time, there was no doubt that this area, where American University was located, would be fully developed.
The history of Spring Valley is long and convoluted, but at its core is the Army's decision during World War I to use this area in Northwest, D.C. for the first dangerous tests and experiments with its new and developing chemical weapons program. The decision to locate a major chemical testing facility and then to bury the debris, unexploded ordinance and chemicals on the site was no accident. The District had no local government and its citizens could elect no one to speak for them in the city where they lived, and no one to represent them in the Congress, which collected their taxes. The federal government itself ruled the city using federally appointed commissioners. Thus, the Army was free to do here what it could not do in Maryland or Virginia or any other state close to a residential area. As many as 800,000 District residents had no vehicle for information on what the Army was doing in their city, and no right to know. The District of Columbia was for these wartime chemical experiments what poorer nations are today when they receive landfill garbage, scrap metal and other waste that Americans did not want in their communities.
As the Spring Valley community more fully developed, the Army failed to inform the District or residents of the munitions and the possible dangers they might pose. In fact, during the 1950s and the 1980s, American University and others raised concerns about buried munitions in Spring Valley, but it was not until 1993 that the Army Corps formally declared the site a FUDS, but only after a utility worker accidentally found buried ordinance. Since that discovery, the Corps has left Spring Valley twice concluding that no large hazards remained. Both times the Corps had to return for more cleaning. Only the oversight of this subcommittee has assured continuing cleanup of Spring Valley.
Now, the Corps of Engineers has again announced to the community that it intends to leave the area in two years. However, the Corps neither informed this Committee, despite its oversight over the years, or me, the city's only elected congressional official. The Corps had no right to announce its exit without more, especially considering the many errors and missteps so far and an absence of transparency over the years that borders on suppression on information. Neither Congress nor the community has seen the Corps' two-year exit plan or other evidence that the areas has been cleaned. Appropriate oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been in question. The decision to destroy the munitions on site raises a host of additional issues. No objective evaluation has been done to assure that this time there are no more ordinance in the area. This hearing and others that may be required seek and must obtain the answers the District and its residents are entitled to have before the Army leaves the nation's only residential site it once used to develop chemical munitions.
I thank our Spring Valley witnesses, Greg Beumel, Nan Wells, Thomas Smith, Kent Slowinski and Harold Bailey, the Army, the Army Corps, EPA, GAO, the D.C. Department of the Environment , Mr. Barton, an ordinance recovery expert, and Mr. Kerwin, president of American University. I look forward to hearing from each of you.